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By 

Oswald  Garrison  Villard 

*  t 

President  New  York  Evening  Post  Company 


A  Series  of  Eight  Articles  Reprinted 
from   The  New  York  Evening  Post 


Copyright  1915 


Price  10  Cents 


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Introduction 


HE  following  articles,  written  for  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  are 
an  effort  to  show,  first,  the  lack  of  any  necessity  for  the  extensive 
military  and  naval  programme  urged  by  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  and  secondly,  that,  unless  a  radical  reform  and  over- 
hauling of  the  army  take  place  before  any  increase  is  made,  the 
tax-payer  will  have  less  assurance  than  ever  that  he  will  receive 
his  money's  worth  in  military  efficiency.  Creating  an  army  means  some- 
thing more  than  adding  men  or  guns.  In  the  articles  that  follow,  facts  are 
given  as  to  the  conditions  in  the  army  and  navy  which  every  American  ought  to 
know  before  he  makes  up  his  mind  as  to  whether  we  need  to  enlarge  our  arma- 
ments, and  what  is  needed  if  the  policy  of  army  increase  is  determined  upon.  Since 
these  articles  were  written,  Congressman  Kitchin  has  given  his  word  to  the  public, 
as  a  member  of  the  House  Naval  Committee  of  years'  standing,  that  our  navy  is 
twice  as  effective  as  the  Japanese,  and  considerably  more  effective  than  the  Ger- 
man. In  fact,  he  quotes  three  of  the  highest  authorities,  Admiral  Fletcher,  Rear- 
Admiral  Badger,  and  Admiral  Winterhalter,  all  of  whom  testify  that  they  would 
not  have  any  fear  in  pitting  the  American  navy  against  the  German.  He  has  fur- 
ther testified  that  in  his  judgment,  if  this  programme  goes  through,  it  will  no  longer 
be  a  question  of  wondering  whether  we  may  become  a  great  militaristic  and  na- 
valistic  power,  but  of  recognizing  that  we  have  become  one.  Surely  this  alone,  from 
a  man  of  Congressman  Kitchin's  high  standing  as  leader  of  the  Democrats  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  ought  to  give  the  nation  pause — at  least  until  the  Euro- 
pean war  is  over.  O.  G.  V. 


LIST  OF  ARTICLES 

Page. 

Preparedness — For  What?   3 

What  Is  the  Matter  with  the  Army? 5 

The  Present  Military  Foundation   8 

Some  Obstacles  to  Efficiency  in  the  Army   10 

Land  Defences  of  Our  Coasts 12 

Shall  We  Pay  the  Militia? 11 

Why  Civilian-  Control  of  the  Navy   16 

The  Real  Reform  and  the  Real  Problem,   18 


'•'••••"     '    •'     :  SPECIAL   NOTICE 

Additional  copies  of  this  pamphlet  will  be  mailed  for  10  cents  each  to  any  ad- 
dress. Quantity  prices  on  application  to  The  New  York  Evening  Post,  20  Vesey 
Street,  New  York. 


THE 


Question  of  Preparedness 


PREPAREDNESS-FOR  WHAT? 

Shall  We  Reverse   Our  Historic  Policy  of  a  Small  Army  Without  Re- 
serves ?_Need  of  Denning  Terms— Why  All  This  Sudden  Hysteria? 
—Enormous  Difficulties  of  Invasion  by  Any  Foreign  Power 


IT  IS  CONCEDED  that  a  sudden  burst 
of  fear  and  anxiety  as  a  result  of  the 
European     war      will     probably    In- 
duce   the    coming   Congress,   under   Mr. 
Wilson's  guidance,  to  reverse  our  historic 
policy  of  a  small  army  without  reserves 
and  to  provide  a  still  larger  fleet.    If  this 
-   the  possibility  or  probability,  the  tax- 
yers,  who  will  have  an  enormous  an- 
al bill  to  pay,  and  the  masses  of  our 
ople  generally,  upon  whose  welfare  the 
■v    departure    will    have    such    a    far- 
ichlng   effect,    should   Insist   upon   the 
lng  down  of  certain  national  policies 
er  the   most   careful   debate  and   dis- 
3sion,  and  above  all  upon  the  definition 
if  many  words  and  phrases  relating  to 
1  armament  now  so  loosely  used. 

Many   politicians    are   solemnly    rising 
assure  us  that  they  believe  In  "rea- 
s  ;iable  preparedness,"  a  phrase  that  no 
one  can  define,  certainly  not  to  suit  the 
advocates  of  large  armies  and  navies  any 
more  than  a  "reasonable  tariff"  could  be 
imed   to   suit     both   the   protectionists 
■-hose  pockets  are  lined  by  tariffs  and  the 
nerican  people  from  whose  pockets  the 
\-idends  are  drawn.     Newspapers  with- 
out number  are  also  declaring  that  they 
favor  "reasonable  preparedness"  without, 
however,  the    slightest    effort    to    define 
.'use  words  for  their  readers.     Some  of 
(hem  assure  us  that  "reasonable  prepar- 
less"  does  not  mean  militarism,  but  If 
l  offered  them  untold  sums  they  could 
not  draw  for  you  the  line  which  divides 
■  illtary  preparedness     from     militarism. 
Tjiey  do  not  know  whether  250,000  regu- 
'   rs  are  one  side  of  the  line  and  300,000 
the  other;  they  cannot  tell  you  If  they 
uld  just  when  a  military  caste  becomes 
c    nenace  to  a  nation.     They  admit  that 
it   can   be;    they   admit   that   In   dealing 
-,h  any  militarism  a  nation  handles  the 
5sible    seeds     of  evil — our     forefathers, 
who  were  familiar  with  British  militar- 
ism, wished  no  Inoculation  of  the  virus 
no  matter  how  diluted  the  dose. 

They  fall  back,  If  hard  pressed,  upon 

l   military  experts,   but  here  they  are 

on  still     less     stable  ground  because  no 

3 1  :en  officers  can  be  got  to  agree  on  any 


given  proposal,  and  If  they  could  be  made 
to  agree,  they  would  not  "stay  put"  be- 
cause they  would  steadily  be  adding  to 
the  number  of  our  possible  or  potential 
enemies  and  to  the  strength  of  each  of 
those  enemies,  precisely  as  the  British 
naval  officers  have  shifted  their  ground 
In  the  last  sixty  years.  Thus  the  latter 
long  held  that  they  must  have  the  largest 
navy  In  the  world  to  defeat  any  other 
single  navy.  Then  they  decided  upon  the 
historic  "two-power  standard,"  that  Is, 
one  lar&e  enough  to  defeat  simultane- 
ously the  two  navies  next  strongest.  This 
was  the  accepted  policy,  but  just  prior 
to  the  present  war  proposals  were  seri- 
ously made  In  naval  circles  that  there 
be  a  three-power  standard  In  order  to 
take  care  at  one  and  the  same  time  of 
the  German.  French,  and  United  States 
navies,  the  menacing  growth  of  the  last- 
named  being  avowedly  the  reason  for 
this  fresh  demand  upon  the  wealth  of 
the  British  people. 

WHAT    IS    "REASONABLE    PREPAREDNESS"? 

If  "reasonable  preparedness"  Is  to  be 
defined,  there  must  first  be  a  decision  on 
certain  far-reaching  national  policies. 
Thus: [Are  we  to  prepare  merely  for  the 
defence  of  our  shores  or  are  we  to  adopt 
the  military  theory  that  often  the  best 
way  to  defend  one's  territory  is  to  take 
the  offensive  and  attack  the  other  fellow 
upon  his?  This  has  been,  as  the  present 
war  has  shown,  the  favorite  theory  of  the 
German  General  Staff,  which  is  still  very 
proud  of  the  fact  that,  barring  Russian 
Incursions  Into  East  Prussia,  all  the 
fighting  has  been  on  their  enemies'  ter- 
ritory In  a  war  which  every  German  is 
convinced  Is  purely  a  defensive  enter- 
prise. If  we  are  to  pay  the  Germans 
the  compliment  of  imitating  them  in  this, 
as  we  are  going  to  Imitate  them  in  many 
other  waysllf  Mr.  Garrison's  plans  are 
adopted,  it  means  that  we  must  have  a 
far  larger  armada  than  for  purely  home 
defensive  purposes.  We  must  have  ocean- 
crossing  submarines,  we  must  have  hos- 
pital ships,  and  endless  other  auxiliaries, 
such    as    mine-laying    vessels,    "mother" 

craft   for     submarines    and     hydroaero 

322515 


planes,  floating  machine-shops  for  re- 
pairs, floating  docks  to  be  towed  abroad 
as  the  British  have  towed  theirs  to  the 
.33gean,  and  colliers  by  the  hundred.  The 
183  war-vessels  Mr.  Daniels  calls  for 
would  by  no  means  meet  the  need.  For 
if  we  send  a  fleet  to  defeat  the  Germans 
and  to  blockade  Germany,  vast  quantities 
of  coal  and  oil  must  be  transported  from 
the  United  States  and  transferred  at 
sea,  for  there  will  be  no  friendly  shelter 
In  which  to  provision  or  repair  or  coal, 
and  ordinary  merchant  vessels  cannot  be 
equipped  with  coal-transferring  appara- 
tus over-night.  All  of  these  problems 
become  more  Intensive  if  the  objective  Is 
Japan;  and  the  Philippines — a  great 
source  of  military  weakness — would 
probably  help  us  not  at  all. 

Again,  the  question  of  a  two-power  or 
a  three-power  navy  at  once  obtrudes  It- 
self, If  we  decide  upon  an  offensive  fleet. 
Already  naval  officers  declare  the  Pana- 
ma Canal  not  the  great  help  It  was  ex- 
pected to  be,  but  a  source  of  weakness, 
since  it  makes  easy  the  splitting  of  the 
fleet.  And  it  has  a  habit  of  being 
blocked.  They,  therefore,  demand  a  Pa- 
cific fleet  as  great  as  the 'Atlantic  one, 
and  they  want  it  all  the  more  since,  as 
any  one  can  see  who  wishes  to  dream 
dreams  and  speculate  as  to  the  future,  a 
joint  combination  of  Japan  and  Germanv 
against  us  Is  quite  within  the  range  of 
possibility  after  the  present  hatreds  havo 
died  out.  Nothing  Is  impossible  in  view 
of  what  has  happened  in  Europe,  they 
say,  and,  therefore,  we  ought  to  prepare 
against  every  possible  contingency.  Is 
not  China  likely  to  arm  now  against  us 
and  Japan?  At  any  rate,  should  we  be 
any  the  less  forehanded  than  the  Brit- 
ish? The  enthusiasts  of  the  Navy 
League,  who  are  demanding  an  Immedi- 
ate bond  Issue  of  $500,000,000  to  be  spent 
on  the  navy  alone,  feel  that  we  ought 
to  arm  against  Great  Britain,  and  have  a 
navy  larger  than  hers,  no  matter  to  what 
"power  standard"  she  should  go.  They 
want,  in  their  own  words,  a  navy  "capable 
of  meeting  any  possible  force  from  across 
the  seas,"  1.  e.,  a  navy  equal  to  that  of 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


T'r»ncc;  Germany,  and  England  com- 
bined. And  of  course,  If  we  are  to  arm 
against  the  British  fleet,  we  must  arm 
against  Canada  and  fortify  the  boundary 
of  whose  defencelessness  for  a  century 
we  have  been  so  proud. 

Then  there  is  the  question  of  commerce — 
its  destruction  and  protection.  The  United 
States,  being  practically  a  self-support- 
ing nation,  could  behold  with  compara- 
tive equanimity  all  its  merchant  navy, 
none  too  large,  blockaded  in  its  own  or 
neutral  harbors.  But  naval  officers  do  not 
like  to  contemplate  this.  Shall  we  not 
imitate  the  glorious  careers  of  the  Emden 
and  the  Karlsruhe?  Is  there  any  better 
way  of  protecting  your  own  ships  than 
by  driving  those  of  the  other  nations  o*1 
the  seas?  Hence  for  our  offensive  navy 
we  must  at  once  create  ocean-going  sub- 
mersibles,  with  an  enormous  cruising  ra- 
dius, particularly  as  we  have  taken  the 
first  step  in  that  direction  by  authorizing 
the  "fleet-submarine." 

THE  SIMPLER   PROBLEM. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  decided 
never  to  contemplate  anything  beyond 
a  defensive  navy,  the  officers  admit  that 
the  problem  is  immediately  simplified. 
They  confess  that  much  cheaper  and 
smaller  submarines  and  more  of  them 
can  be  constructed;  that  the  huge  auxil- 
iary flotilla  could  be  largely  eliminated 
and  the  monitor  type  of  coast-defence 
vessel,  like  those  built  for  the  Brazilian 
navy,  which  the  British  have  found  most 
useful  on  the  shallow  Belgian  coast,  can 
be  greatly  developed.  The  problem  of  mine 
fields  could  then  be  studied  in  coBpera- 
tion  with  our  land  coast-defence  forces, 
and  the  latter  taken  into  account  in  the 
development  of  any  purely  naval-defence 
problem,  particularly  as  our  coast  de- 
fences are  considered  impregnable  by 
our  leading  ordnance  and  coast-artillery 
officers.  The  value  of  coast  defences 
would  seem  to  have  been  amply  demon- 
strated in  this  war;  the  coast  defences  in 
the  Dardanelles  and  along  the  Belgian 
coast  have  quite  held  their  own  in  the 
contest  with  the  floating  gun.  The  Brit- 
ish have  not  been  able  to  land  troops 
on  the  Belgian  coast,  despite  the  ef- 
ficiency of  their  monitors.  The  question, 
then,  would  seem  to  be  whether  we  have 
not  a  large  enough  fleet  to  make  up  the 
deficiencies,  if  any,  in  our  coast  defences, 
provided  that  we  adopt  as  a  fixed  nation- 
al policy  the  theory  that  we  shall  not 
send  them  abroad  to  wage  war  under 
any  conceivable  circumstances. 

There  was  a  time,  and  not  so  very  long 
ago,  when  our  military  experts  were  cer- 
tain that  we  could  protect  our  coasts 
without  any  navy  at  all.  This  was  the 
belief  of  the  Endicott  Fortifications 
Board,  which  drew  up  the  present  plan 
of  our  coast  defences  in  the  days  before 
we  had  any  navy  worth  speaking  of. 
They  undertook  to  do  this  for  a  compara- 
tively small  sum.  Since  that  time  we 
have  spent  $175,973,699.13,  so  that  we 
ought  to  have  something  for  our  money. 

WHY    ALL    THE    HYSTERIA? 

After  the  questions  of  policy  are  de- 
cided, would  it  not  pay  Congress  and 
the  American  people  to  Inquire  calmly 
and  quietly — and  not  in  the  stress  of 
emotion  of  a  world  war — whether  the 
present  coast  defences  for  which  the 
builders  vouch   so  unqualifiedly  are  not 


enough  in  connection  with  a  large  fleet 
of  submarines  to  let  us  sleep  o'  nights? 

The  question  is  the  more  pertinent 
because  no  writer  who  favors  greater 
preparedness  seems  to  have  any  faith 
whatever  in  our  present  navy.  If  I  were 
a  naval  officer,  I  should  be  deeply  hu- 
miliated by  the  fact  that  every  one  of 
the  dozens  upon  dozens  of  articles  that 
I  have  read  which  explain  why  it  is 
necessary  that  we  should  have  a  mobile 
army  with  reserves  of  no  less  than  500,- 

000  men  to  stand  behind  our  coast  de- 
fences and  to  prevent  the  enemy  from 
landing  at  Atlantic  City  or  Montauk 
Point  begins  by  taking  it  for  gran'ed  that 
the  fleet  will  be  overwhelmingly  defeated. 

1  have  heard  learned  Admirals  make 
after-dinner  speeches  which  began  with 
the  assumption — or  the  admission,  if  you 
please— that  in  :iuy  engagement  our 
fleet  in  Its  present  numbers  would  bf 
smashed  and  sunk.  They  seem  to 
have  no  confidence  in  themselves  or  their 
vessels  unless  they  are  given  a  com- 
plete preponderance  in  numbers.  They 
have  no  belief  in  the  possibility  of  a 
superior  skill  and  morale  to  offset  small- 
er forces. 

So  the  civilian  writers,  even  in  the 
days  before  it  was  popular  to  run  down 
the  navy  and  to  accuse  Secretary  Dan- 
iels of  every  crime  In  the  category,  in- 
cluding all  the  sins  of  omission  and  com- 
mission of  all  his  predecessors,  have  no 
doubts  whatever  as  to  what  will  happen 
to  our  fleet  in  any  possible  action.  To 
them,  forsooth,  any  battle  spells  defeat, 
overwhelming,  disastrous,  complete  defeat. 
They  do  not  leave  us  even  half  a  dozen 
submarines  after  it  with  which  to  harass 
any  hostile  fleet  and  the  enormous  ag- 
gregation of  hostile  transports  and  aux- 
iliaries which  will  be  necessary  for  any 
elaborate  expedition  against  our  shores, 
particularly  if  it  should  be  a  joint  mili- 
tary and  naval  one.  In  all  our  military 
arguments  we  start  on  the  theory  and 
assumption  that  the  worst  conceivable  is 
bound  to  happen;  our  fleet  to  the  last 
destroyer  and  submarine  goes  down,  and 
the  enemy  then  chooses  in  all  delibera- 
tion certain  points  well  known  to  the 
magazine  writers  on  our  next  wars,  and 
the  disembarkation  takes  place  without 
the  slightest  molestation. 

ENORMOUS  DIFFICULTIES  OF  INVASION. 
These  writers  are  in  no  wise  con- 
cerned with  the  fact  that  it  Is  only  with 
great  difficulty  that  a  landing  of  all  the 
multifarious  equipment  of  a  modern 
army  could  take  place  anywhere  with- 
out docks;  that  42-centimetre  guns,  or 
even  those  considerably  smaller,  can- 
not be  put  ashore  at  Montauk  with- 
out pontoons,  lighters,  cranes  of  great 
capacity,  etc.  One  cannot  land  the  mod- 
ern field  gun  strapped  across  the  bows 
of  a  couple  of  steam  launches;  but  If 
one  could,  the  process  for  a  large  army 
would  be  interminable.  Certainly  no  for- 
eign general  in  his  senses  would  seek 
as  his  base  a  little  harbor  remote  from 
a  railroad  which  could  not  contain  any- 
thing more  than  a  fraction  of  the  mighty 
armada  an  Invading  force  must  brlng 
with  It.  Still  less  would  he  dream  of 
landing  on  the  open  beach.  It  is  true 
that  Admiral  Fletcher,  when  asked  by 
a  Congressional  committee  last  winter 
whether  an  enemy  could  land  on  such  a 


shore  as  that  between  Norfolk  and  Port 
Royal,  where  there  are  no  anchorages 
for  deep-draught  battleships  or  any  other 
craft,  and  a  surf  which  so  often  becomes 
impossible  In  stormy  weather  for  the 
stanchest  lifeboats,  replied  that  such  a 
landing  could  be  made. 

Unfortunately  no  Congressman  asked 
Admiral  Fletcher  what  would  happen  to 
the  people  who  landed,  or  how  long  they 
could  keep  In  touch  with  their  fleet,  and 
how  secure  a  base  and  uource  of  supplies 
a  fleet  off  the  beach  landing  every  round 
of  rifle  ammunition  through  the  surf 
would  be.  Some  of  our  Civil  War  vet- 
erans who  spent  three  years  rolling  in 
the  seas  off  those  coasts  in  the  blockad- 
ing squadrons  and  tried  so  hard  to  stay 
at  their  posts  in  all  weathers,  could  tell 
some  interesting  things  about  life  under 
those  conditions.  Our  commanding  offi- 
cers at  Daiquiri  in  1898,  when  we  landed 
our  troops  on  the  beach,  could  also  tell 
some  stimulating  facts  about  their  own 
anxieties  lest  the  transport  fleet  be  scat- 
tered In  every  direction  by  a  West  Indian 
hurricane.  Yet  that  was  a  trifling  un- 
dertaking compared  to  any  possible  in- 
vasion of  the  United  Stages.  Gen.  Shat- 
ter's army,  for  instance,  had  only  75  cav- 
alry horses  with  it,  and.  of  course,  no 
heavy  siege  guns,  aeroplanes,  motor 
transportation,  etc. 

Merely  to  state  the  problems  shows  in- 
to what  endless  fields  of  speculation  and 
of  mere  personal  opinion  one  may  be  led. 
With    all    respect   for   Admiral   Fletcher, 
his  views — whatever  they  may  prove  in 
detail  to  be — can   doubtless  be  offset  by 
many  other  military  opinions.     Moreover, 
when   it   comes   to   guessing   upon    such 
matters  as  these  a  civilian  opinion  may 
be   just   as  valuable   as  a  military,   cer- 
tainly on  the  question  of  the  transporta- 
tion problem.     One  may  doubt,  however, 
whether   Admiral    Fletcher    would    deny 
the  recent  statement   (New  York   Times, 
\ugust  21,  1915)  of  Capt  Charles  E.  Kil- 
bourne,  of  the  Army  General  Staff,  that 
no  frontal  attack  by  a  fleet  upon  coast 
fortifications  has  ever  been  successful  in 
modern  times,  Captain  Kilbourne  describ- 
ing the  naval  attack  on  the  Dardanelles 
as  a   "hopeless   failure,"  as  was  the  di- 
rect assault  on  Port  Arthur  by  the  Japa- 
nese ships.    To  this  he  might  have  added 
that  even  if  the  German  fleet  were  out 
of  the  way  the  British  navy  would  never 
dare  to  attack  the   German   coast  forti- 
fications, protected  as  they  are  by  mine 
fields,    by    the    most    treacherous    shoals 
through   which     the     most     experienced 
pilot  would  take  no  ship  if  all  the  buoys 
and  marks  were  removed,  and  the  light- 
houses     extinguished.        All     of     which 
merely  reinforces  the  point  already  made 
that   before   any  action   towards   further 
militarism    is    taken    by    the    public    the 
public   should   know   precisely   what   our 
military  problems  are  and  what  our  real 
dangers.     This  knowledge  should  not  be 
confined  to  the  Army  General  Staff  or  to 
the  Navy  War  College  because  those  ex- 
perts are  bound  to  take  counsel  of  fh 
worst  fears;  they  see  darkly  at  all  tim 
and,  like  all  other  military  men  the  world 
over,  never  could  be  given  enough  men 
or  ships  or  fortifications  to  satisfy  the; 
If  they  could  be  thus  satisfied,  they  won 
be   unique  in   the  history  of  militarisi 
If  it  is  true,  as  Mr.  Henry  A.  Wise  Woi  . 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


asserts,  that  there  are  documents  In  the 
War  Department  proving  that  750.000 
men  could  be  landed  on  our  Atlantic 
Coast  In  forty-six  days,  and  350,000  on 
our  Pacific  Coast  in  sixty-one  days,  both 
armies  with  sufficient  supplies  for  three 
months,  then  the  public  ought  to  know 
it,  for  that  involves  again  the  admission 
that  our  fleet  is  of  no  value  whatever 
and  that  our  coast  defences  are  not 
worth  the  vast  sums  spent  upon  them 
since  we  began  to  modernize  them  in 
1884. 

QUESTIONS  TO  BE  SETTLED. 

And  then  the  public  should  be  told 
whether  besides  the  fleet  the  army  must 
be  raised  to  a  three-power  standard,  that 
is,  to  a  size  capable  of  meeting  the  sup- 
posititious maximum  fleet  and  landing 
forces  of  England,  Germany,  and  France. 
This  knowledge  is  very  important,  not 
only  for  Americans,  but  for  the  rest  of 
the  world.  For  if  we  plunge  into  arma- 
ment on  any  considerable  scale  it  will 
mean  that  the  foreign  countries  will  be- 
gin to  count  us  in  on  their  two-  or 
three-power  plan,  provided  always  that 
the  peace  to  come  in  Europe  does  not  do 
away  with  the  whole  abominable  and 
wicked  system  of  armament  with  its 
frightful  injustice  to  the  working  classes, 


upon  whose  bowed  backs  it  binds  such 
monstrous  burdens.  Proof  of  this  is  the 
discussion  in  the  British  Parliament  and 
the  Reichstag  in  recent  years  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  increasing  the  British  and  Ger- 
man fleets  because  of  the  growing  peril 
from  the  American.  The  announcement 
that  the  United  States  had  definitely  de- 
cided on  a  policy,  namely  that  of  building 
a  purely  defensive  navy,  and  of  putting 
complete  faith  for  defence  in  that  and 
our  unsurpassed  coast  defences,  would 
at  least  free  the  European  nations  from 
the  fear  of  aggression  by  us.  just  as  the 
adoption  by  us  of  the  reverse  policy 
would  cause  the  European  war  lords  to 
take  due  notice  and  give  them  the  excuse 
to  wring  more  millions  out.  of  their  op- 
pressed subjects,  and  to  draft  more  of 
them  for  the  unholy  profession  of  arms.* 
For  the  United  States  there  is  still  an- 
other decision  possible:  that  we  cling  to 
our  historic  policy  of  being  unarmed; 
that  we  go  along  as  heretofore  keeping 
free  from  the  European  entanglements  in 

♦Since  the  above  was  written,  Lord  Rosebery, 
the  English  statesman,  has  publicly  said:  "I 
know  nothing  more  disheartening  than  the  an- 
nouncement recently  made  that  the  United  States 
— the  one  great  country  left  in  the  world  free 
from  the  hideous,  bloody  burden  of  war — is  about 
to  embark  upon  the  building  of  a  huge  armada 
destiued  to  be  equal  or  second  to  our  own." 


accordance  with  Washington's  solemn 
admonition;  that  we  instruct  our  Admin- 
istrations to  pursue  the  most  pacific  of 
policies,  as  President  Wilson  has  but 
lately  shown  anew  the  power  of  the 
moral  influence  and  the  ideals  of  this  na- 
tion to  see  us  through  a  most  difficult 
situation,  and  that  we  preserve  our 
wealth  for  other  and  infinitely  more  val- 
uable expenditures.  For  it  must  be  clear- 
ly understood  that,  if  we  adopt  either 
one  of  the  other  policies,  we  must  at  the 
smallest  possible  estimate  increase  our 
military  expenditures  to  more  than 
$1,000,000,000  during  the  next  five 
years.  To-day  we  spend,  for  military 
purposes,  with  pensions,  74  cents  out  of 
every  $1  appropriated  by  Congress.  We 
shall  not  only  have  to  raise  this  figure  to 
90  cents,  but  vastly  increase  the  number  of 
dollars.  Billion-and-a-half  Congresses 
will  be  a  matter  of  course.  The  income 
tax  must  go  up  and  so  must  indirect  tax- 
es of  every  kind.  We  must  also  be  pre- 
pared to  starve  education,  the  conserva- 
tion of  national  resources,  the  develop- 
ment of  rivers  and  harbors,  of  waste 
lands,  and  the  betterment  of  social  con- 
ditions in  every  direction.  All  as  our  trib- 
ute to  the  greatness  of  the  German  Gen- 
eral Staff  and  the  God  of  War! 


WHAT  IS  THE  MATTER  WITH  THE  ARMY? 

Injured  by  Political  Interference  from  the  Outside  and  Wastefulness  and 
Sloth  Within — Extravagance  at  West  Point  and  Absurdity  at  Gover- 
nor's Island— How  We  Misuse  "Best  Soldier  Material  on  Earth  " 


IF  THE  advocates  of  peace  were  to  run 
down  the  regular  army  as  the  advo- 
cates of  greater  preparedness  have 
been  decrying  it  during  the  last  year, 
they  would  undoubtedly  find  themselves 
charged  with  being  unpatriotic,  if  not 
traitorous,  and  certainly  guilty  of  mali- 
cious hostility  to  our  land-defence  forces. 
The  advocates  of  larger  appropriations 
do  not  hesitate  to  denounce  the  army  as 
being  mismanaged  and  not  up  to  its  task, 
but  they  usually  lay  the  blame  upon 
Congress,  which  they  say  has  "starved" 
the  army,  has  insisted  on  the  mainte- 
nance of  forts  of  no  earthly  military  value, 
built,  like  those  at  Helena,  Mont,  Chey- 
enne, Wyo.,  and  Des  Moines,  la.,  for  po- 
litical purposes  in  order  to  placate  certain 
powerful  politicians,  and  perhaps  there- 
by to  purchase  certain  army  reforms 
which  could  not  otherwise  have  been  at- 
tained. Senator  Carter,  of  Montana;  Con- 
gressman Hull,  of  Iowa,  and  Senator 
Warren,  of  Wyoming,  were,  in  their  per- 
sons, the  "military  necessity"  for  the  con- 
struction of  those  three  forts,  which,  like 
the  one  near  Denver,  ought  long  since  to 
have  been  turned  into  civilian  colleges 
and  abandoned  by  the  military. 

But  while  politics  has  been  the  bane 
of  the  army,  and  Congress  can  be  justly 
indicted  for  its  treatment  of  the  ser- 
vice, the  faults  in  the  army  are  by  no 
means  due  to  Congress  alone.  As  any 
one  who  criticises  the  service  and  points 


out  its  shortcomings,  except  in  order  to 
ask  that  the  taxpayers  pour  out  more 
money  for  its  aggrandizement,  is  sure 
to  be  denounced,  let  me  say  at  once 
that  the  statements  in  this  and  other 
articles  are  obtained  chiefly  from  army 
officers,  and  from  twenty-five  years  of 
personal  observation  and  study;  that 
they  are  actuated  by  no  spirit  of  hos- 
tility toward  any  individuals,  though 
frankly  written  from  the  point  of  view  of 
one  who  does  not  believe  in  a  large  army, 
yet  has  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  la- 
bored diligently  to  bring  about  the  wise 
expenditure  of  100  cents  for  every  dol- 
lar appropriated  by  Congress,  and  has 
invariably  defended  the  army  against  the 
politicians.  It  was  an  able  Secretary 
of  War  who  remarked  to  the  writer  that 
the  trouble  with  the  army  was  that  its 
"survey-boards  did  not  survey,  its  courts- 
martial  did  not  court-martial,  its  retire- 
ment boards  did  not  retire,  and  its  pro- 
motion boards  did  not  properly  promote" 
— a  condiUon  of  affairs  that  cannot  be  at- 
tributed to  Congress,  though  its  causes 
hark  back  to  politics. 

INTERFERENCE    OK    POLITICS. 

Indeed,  this  very  Secretary  of  War 
consented  to  the  setting  aside  of  sen- 
tences of  courts-martial  and  actions  of 
other  military  tribunals  for  personal  or 
political  reasons.  During  his  incumbency 
we   had   some   of   the   worst   cases   ever 


known  of  officers  being  jumped,  through 
Presidential  favoritism,  over  the  heads  of 
hundreds  of  others.  Under  this  Secre- 
tary that  order  was  first  issued  which 
Secretary  Garrison  is  the  first  head  of  the 
War  Department  to  enforce — that  any 
officer  using  political  influence  should 
have  it  entered  on  its  record  against 
him. 

But  the  politicians  did  not  then  stop 
going  to  the  War  Department;  it  was 
even  carefully  explained  by  officials  to 
some  of  them  that  the  order  was  issued 
merely  to  head  off  those  who  were  not 
the  Administration's  favorites,  or  whose 
favor  was  not  necessary  to  the  Adminis- 
tration's success  in  Congress.  Naturally, 
army  officers  stuck  their  tongues  in  their 
cheeks  when  this  order  was  talked  of 
and  the  old  game  of  pull  and  poliUcs 
went  on  as  blithely  as  ever  unUl  the 
army  discovered  that  Lindley  M.  Gar- 
rison meant  business,  and  that  the  use 
of  influence  was  being  entered  upon  of- 
ficers' efficiency  records  against  them. 

Now  the  corridors  of  the  War  Depart- 
ment are  not  visited  by  Congressmen  and 
Senators,  and  there  is  at  this  writing 
but  one  case  on  record  where  Presiden- 
tial favoritism  has  been  used  to  the  det- 
riment of  the  army  under  Mr.  Wilson — 
a  rather  flagrant  case,  too.  How  can  one 
expect  army  reUring  boards  to  reUre 
adequately  if  the  War  Department  seta 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


aside  their  finding's  to  oblige  a  Senator? 
The  reason  Is  known  Instantly,  by  the 
army  grapevine  telegraph,  from  Pana- 
ma to  Alaska  and  the  Philippines,  and 
the  army  guides  Itself  accordingly. 

It  is  only  rarely  that  an  officer  Is  able 
to  rise  by  merit.  As  soon  as  he  enters 
the  army,  therefore,  the  young  officer.  If 
he  Is  wise,  marries  the  daughter  of  a 
Senator,  or  of  a  powerful  newspaper  own- 
er, or  of  a  millionaire  contributor  to  cam- 
paign funds,  and  seeks  to  get  ahead  of 
his  fellows  not  by  superior  diligence  or 
ability,  but  by  the  free  use  of  Influence. 
It  has  been  "the  devil  take  the  hind- 
most." When  Congressman  Hull,  by  rea- 
son of  his  being  chairman  of  the  House 
Military  Affairs  Committee,  was  able  to 
land  his  son,  a  man  of  only  mediocre 
ability,  In  a  position  as  major,  from  which 
he  rose  In  ten  years  to  be  a  colonel  and 
Judge-advocate  at  the  age  of  only  thirty- 
seven,  what  Incentive  Is  there  to  qualify 
for  such  a  position  by  legal  study  and 
practice?  Again,  when  the  war  broke  out 
in  1898  a  lot  of  men,  some  good  and  some 
bad,  were  ordered  to  Fort  Monroe  to  take 
the  physical  examination  for  commis- 
sions. A  number  of  them  failed,  but  they 
were  all  appointed  just  the  same.  Presi- 
dent McKlnley  saw  nothing  out  of  keep- 
ing with  his  oath  of  office  In  appointing 
them,  although  they  might  break  down  at 
once  In  the  war  when  capable  officers 
were  needed,  or,  If  not,  were  certain  to 
load  up  the  retired  list  at  an  early  age. 
But  how  could  any  Secretary  of  War  ex- 
pect that,  particular  examining  board  to 
take  Its  work  seriously  or  to  "find"  can-  | 
didates  when  it  knew  that  its  reports  were 
utterly  Ignored? 

BOMB    CONSPICUOUS    INSTANCES. 

Is  it  any  wonder  in  view  of  this  regime 
of  politics  that  the  soldierly  spirit  in  the 
army  is  at  a  low  ebb?  Take  the  list  of 
our  present  generals,  and  run  over  the 
reasons  for  their  appointment  to  high 
positions.  Gen.  Wood  was  promoted  to 
the  rank  of  a  regular  brigadier  because 
he  was  credited  with  having  cleaned  up 
Cuba — an  excellent  achievement,  but  not 
a  military  one,  he  being,  moreover,  a  doc- 
tor without  military  training.  Gen.  Tas- 
ker  H.  Bliss  earned  the  same  rank  by 
being  an  admirable  collector  of  customs 
at  Havana,  jumping  up  from  the  rank  of 
major  for  this  worthy  but  non-military 
service.  Gen.  Frederick  Funston  won  the 
same  position  because  of  excellent  work 
as  a  volunteer  colonel,  for  which  a  cap- 
taincy would  have  sufficed  had  not  the 
Kansas  delegation  achieved  more;  Gen. 
J.  J.  Pershing  jumped  from  captain  to 
brigadier  avowedly  because  of  a  successful 
expedition  In  the  Philippines,  but  really 
because  he  was  a  son-in-law  of  the  all- 
powerful  Wyoming  Senator.  Gen.  Albert 
Mills  rose  in  a  bound  from  captain  to 
brigadier,  thanks  to  Roosevelt's  favor,  be- 
cause he  had  the  good  luck  to  be  wound- 
ed, In  the  first  skirmish  in  1898,  near 
the  Rough  Rider  Colonel,  and  was  a  well- 
thought-of  officer. 

Two  of  the  present  brigadiers  won  their 
rank  by  act  of  Congress  for  excellent  ser- 
vice on  the  Panama  Canal;  they  merited 
reward,  of  course,  but  why  should  they, 
trained  and  practiced  chieflv  as  engineers, 
be  put  Into  a  position  to  command  troops 
when  one  has  never  drilled  more  than 
a  company  In  his  life  and  the  other  com' 


manded   a   volunteer   regiment   for   four 
days  only? 

The  rewards  given  by  Congress  for 
Panama  work  have  been  utterly  dispro- 
portionate on  the  military  side  and  mere- 
ly drive  home  to  the  service  the  lesson 
that  the  way  to  Jump  from  colonel  to 
major-general  of  the  line,  as  Col.  Goethals 
did  against  his  wish,  Is  by  orilllant  work 
along  non-military  lines.  Naturally,  Ma- 
jor-Gen. Goethals  Is  not  Interested  In 
holding  that  rank  or  commanding  troops 
when  he  Is  an  engineer,  and  so  he  pro- 
poses to  retire  as  soon  as  his  canal  work 
is  done.  The  late  Major-Gen.  Frederick 
Grant  was,  of  course,  a  purely  political 
appointment;  and  so  It  goes. 

RECENT  APPOINTMENTS  FOR  MERIT. 

Only  recently  have  there  been  appoint- 
ed generals  who  really  merited  the  rank 
In  the  eyes  of  the  service,  and  there  again 
the  credit  lies  with  the  Wilson  Adminis- 
tration. That  several  of  the  others  like 
Bliss,  Wood,  and  Funston  have  made 
good  as  generals  In  the  opinion  of  the 
service,  does  not,  of  course,  weaken  the 
fact  that  their  original  appointments 
were  subversive  of  the  Interests  of  the 
army.  Even  the  present  Chief  of  Staff, 
Gen.  Scott,  an  excellent  man,  of  particu- 
lar usefulness  in  Indian  and  Mexican 
negotiating,  won  his  rapid  rise  under 
Mr.  Wilson  not  by  military  exploits,  but 
by  non-military  traits,  his  knowledge  of 
Indians,  their  sign  language,  his  skill  as  a 
plenipotentiary,  etc. 

This  lack  of  the  real  soldierly  spirit 
is  the  great  weakness  of  the  service  to- 
day. By  that  is  not  meant  that  the  army 
should  acquire  Prussian  arrogance  or  em- 
brace the  spirit  of  Prussian  militarism — 
though  there  are  some  officers  quite 
ready  to  go  the  whole  hog — but  It  ought 
to  acquire  German  Industry,  German  ap- 
plication, and  German  thoroughness. 
Judged  by  those  standards  a  good  part  of 
the  American  army  is  lazy.  Suppos- 
ing every  regiment  of  regulars  were  or- 
dered to  march  out  of  its  barracks  and 
drill  every  day  from  5  A.  M.  until  eleven 
o'clock,  as  the  German  regiments  do  for 
months  at  a  time — what  would  happen? 
There  would  all  but  be  mutiny.  The 
regiments  would  be  depleted  by  desertions 
and  most  of  the  officers  would  think  of 
resigning  or  would  run  to  their  Con- 
gressmen for  help.  Yet  it  is  just  such 
hard  work  that  makes  a  fine  army. 

Foreign  officers  admire  our  West  Point 
without  exception;  but  there  is  no  rea- 
son on  earth,  they  say,  why  the  excel- 
lence of  drill  attained  there  should  not 
be  the  standard  of  the  army.  If  It  can 
be  achieved  in  one  place,  It  can  In  an- 
other. Yet  the  regular  regiments  that 
have  passed  through  New  York  recently, 
notably  the  Thirtieth  Infantry,  have 
marched  so  badly  and  generally  ap- 
peared so  slack  that  in  most  foreign 
armies  the  colonel  commanding  would 
have  been  Instantly  cashiered  or  retired. 
Yet  the  physical  material  in  that  regiment 
was  superb  and  the  men  looked  wonder- 
fully fit.  Good  marching  on  parade  Is  not 
everything,  and  neither  is  soldierly  ap- 
pearance ;  but  if  they  are  worth  the  time 
and  labor  spent  on  them  at  West  Point 
they  are  worth  It  in  the  service.  Good 
shooting   is   worth   far   more,   and   so   is 


self  in  the  field,  how  to  Intrench,  etc.,  etc. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  every  real  sol- 
dier knows  that  drill  Is  at  the  founda- 
tion of  discipline  as  the  alphabet  and 
reading  are  at  the  bottom  of  mental  dis- 
cipline. 

The  great  trouble  is  that  the  newly 
graduated  cadet  finds  the  service  slack, 
many  poor  colonels,  and  latterly  far  more 
interest  In  athletics  than  In  purely  mil- 
itary functions.  There  Is  no  incentive 
to  soldierllness,  and  no  chance  to  ad- 
vance oneself  by  rigid  application  to 
routine  drills.  Often  a  West  Pointer,  who 
was  a  model  In  his  bearing  at  the  Acad- 
emy, slouches  like  any  civilian  appointee. 

For  this  Congress  Is  not  responsible. 
Nor  is  it  accountable  for  the  gross  ex- 
travagance in  the  service,  and  the  con- 
stant lack  of  soldierly  honor  in  dealing 
with  the  money  Congress  votes.  If  there 
ever  was  a  wasteful  branch  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, It  Is  the  army.  I  have  myself 
seen  It  march  away  from  manoeuvre 
grounds  and  leave  behind  shower-baths 
and  other  facilities  erected  at  a  cost  of 
thousands — for  the  near-by  farmers  to 
profit  by. 

A  post  surgeon  recently  requested,  and 
his  request  was  approved  by  the  post 
commander,  a  $30,000  Isolation  hospital. 
The  Secretary  of  War  ascertained  that 
there  had  been  not  one  or  two  contagious 
cases  In  a  year  there;  but  that  did  not 
interest  the  surgeon.  Another  wanted 
a  costly  flight  of  stairs  because  the  old 
one  was  worn  out.  A  high  official  and 
three  or  four  generals  tested  the  stairs; 
they  were  perfectly  sound,  but  being 
slightly  worn,  were  offensive  to  the  sur- 
geon. Was  not  Uncle  Sam's  Treasury 
full?    Why  not  turn  to  It? 

But  the  classic  example  Is  West  Point. 
If  there  ever  was  a  colossal  blunder,  It 
was  the  reconstruction  of  West  Point. 
It  is  architecturally  beautiful;  every  con- 
ceivable comfort  is  provided.  There  is 
a  power  station  there  that  is  wonderful, 
and  as  spick  and  span  as  a  cadet  on 
full-dress  parade.  The  gymnasium  is 
superb,  and,  that  the  sons  of  Mars  may 
know  something  about  the  Prince  of 
Peace  (though  He  was  a  Peace-at-any- 
Price  man),  there  is  a  $450,000  Protestant 
chapel,  which  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
church  edifices  extant  The  post  is  lined 
with  splendid  officers'  quarters,  costing 
from  $20,000  up,  and  the  Superintendent 
has  just  asked  for  thirty  or  forty  more,  at 
$20,000  apiece.  The  administration  of- 
fices are  magnificent  Gothic,  and  the 
cadets'  quarters  are  quite  beautiful  com- 
pared to  the  plain  ones  that  Sherman, 
Sheridan,  Lee,  and  Grant  occupied.  What 
a  lesson  for  the  humble  farmers'  sons, 
the  offspring  of  the  plain  American  peo- 
ple! What  a  contrast  to  the  real  dem- 
ocracy with  which  the  student  body  Is 
recruited!  What  a  complete  reversal  of 
the  lessons  of  simple,'  hard  living  that  a 
soldier  ought  to  be  taught! 

But  the  officers  who  have  controlled 
West  Point  care  nothing  for  the  example 
set  by  Kaiser  Wilhelm  I  of  Germany, 
who  slept  in  his  palace  on  his  soldier's 
iron  cot  until  the  end  of  his  life. 

SOME   WEST   POINT   EXTRAVAGANCES. 

It  actually  costs  $20,000,  I  have  been 
informed  in  military  circles,  to  educate  a 


the  knowledge  of  how  to  care  for  one- boy  at  West  Point,  as  against  $12,000  at 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PREPAREDNESS 


Annapolis.  I  do  not  vouch  for  the  cor- 
rectness of  the  figure,  but  give  It  as  it 
came  to  me.  It  is  said  to  cost  Harvard 
$2,500  for  each  student  Of  course,  Har- 
vard does  not  house  or  feed  its  students 
free  of  charge  or  pay  them,  but  the  dis- 
proportion is  still  far  too  great 

The  Military  Academy  bill  contains  a 
provision  of  $17,700  in  extra  pay  for  of- 
ficers, in  addition  to  their  regular  salaries, 
and  the  Superintendent  Is  asking  $125,000 
for  a  laundry  which  will  wash  several 
times  as  many  clothes  for  the  women 
and  children  of  the  Academy  as  for  its 
cadets.  What  ideas  as  to  what  army 
posts  ought  to  be  will  these  cadets  carry 
away  with  them?  What  are  they  to 
think  when  they  see  women  living  in 
costly  quarters  obtained  from  Congress 
on  the  plea  that  they  were  to  be  used 
only  as  bachelor  quarters?  What  are 
they  to  think  of  the  use  of  Cullum  Memo- 
rial Hall  for  teas  and  social  events  of  all 
kinds,  as  to  which  there  is  no  reference 
in  Gen.  Cullum's  will?  Or  of  officers 
families  boarding  in  a  part  of  the  costly 
bachelor  officers'  mess?  Or  that  there 
are  four  and  a  half  persons,  chiefly  wo- 
men and  children,  at  West  Point  to  each 
cadet?  That  there  are  already  110  de- 
tailed officers  in  addition  to  civilian  teach- 
ers to  an  average  of  620  cadets,  and  many 
more  are  asked  for?  That  the  officers' 
quarters  contain  fine  mahogany  furni- 
ture, costing  between  $400  and  $500  of 
the  taxpayers'  money?  Can  they  take 
away  any  other  idea  than  that  an  army 
post  or  school  is  erected  primarily  for 
the  purpose  of  promoting  the  personal 
welfare  and  comfort  of  officers  and  their 
families,   particularly  their  families? 

The  truth  is  that  West  Point  is,  be- 
cause of  its  physical  formation,  not  at 
all  adapted  for  its  purposes;  but  the  fact 
that  there  is  not  enough  drill  ground 
now  for  600  men  in  open-order  tactics 
does  not  prevent  the  present  Superinten- 
dent from  asking  that  the  corps  be  in- 
creased to  1.100  men. 

ABSURDITY.    AT    GOVERNOR'S    ISLAND. 

Of  course,  West  Point  is  not  the  only 
place  where  one  finds  this  waste  of  the 
public  funds  on  the  recommendation  of 
army  officers.  What  could  be  more  use- 
less than  Governor's  Island,  the  chief 
purpose  of  which  is  to  provide  a  plea- 
sant home  for  thirty  or  forty  officers? 
Its  garrison  is  needless,  and  no  other 
army  in  the  world  would  put  a  battalion 
of  infantry  on  a  little  island  where  it 
could  not  march  to  save  its  souls.  Hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  dollars  would  be 
saved  if  the  place  were  closed  up,  the 
officers  made  to  live  on  their  allowances 
for  commutation  of  quarters  in  the  city 
of  New  York  or  Newark  or  New  Ro- 
chelle,  or  wherever  they  pleased,  just 
as  the  officers  of  German  and  French 
regiments  find  their  own  family  quar- 
ters; no  one  cares  where  they  live  as 
long  as  they  are  on  hand  for  duty.  Surely, 
Gen.  Barry,  a  real  soldier  among  our  gen- 
erals, is  entitled  to  great  credit  for  holding 
down  some  of  the  extravagances  at  West 
Point,  and  particularly  for  preventing 
the  waste  of  $25,000  for  quarters  there 
for  the  Secretary  of  War  and  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  (to  be  used 
once  a  year  perhaps),  for  he  was  going 


directly  against  the  popular  current  in 
the  army. 

Truly,  if  West  Point  is  to  be  regarded 
as  setting  the  tone  of  the  army,  then 
the  tone  of  the  service  is  one  of  un- 
military  living,  and  needless  extrava- 
gance, with  the  emphasis  on  anything 
but  those  ascetic  and  virile  qualities  and 
rigid,  plain  standards  of  living  that  go 
so  far  to  make  the  true  soldier.  The 
cadets  even  go  into  camp  in  tents  with 
permanent  wood  floors,  electric  lights, 
etc..  and  only  once  in  a  year  do  they 
leave  the  Point  for  a  long  march!  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  a  Bavarian  general  once 
said  to  me  after  seeing  West  Point: 

"Your  academy  is  splendid,  your  Corps 
of  Cadets  is  magnificent,  but,  if  I  were 
the  Superintendent,  I  would  march  them 
away  from  the  academy  and  put  them 
into  camp  in  the  hills  behind  the 
Point." 

NOT  STUDYING  THE  PRESENT   WAR. 

Is  it  surprising  to  learn  that  the  large 
maps  of  the  seats  of  war  placed  in  the 
officers'  mess  at  West  Point  at  the  out- 
break of  the  war  have  been  taken  down 
because  the  fifty  officers  who  resort  to 
that  mess  are  no  longer  sufficiently  in- 
terested in  the  war  to  make  it  worth 
while  to  retain  them? 

I  asked  particularly  the  other  day 
whether  there  were  not  weekly  quizzes 
on  the  progress  of  the  war  there;  wheth- 
er the  senior  officers  are  not  lecturing 
weekly  on  the  strategy  of  the  campaign 
as  it  is  unfolded;  whether  they  are  not 
playing  the  war-game  as  it  is  presented 
in  each  one  of  the  fields  of  operation, 
but  I  was  assured  that  nothing  of  the 
kind  had  happened — incredible  as  it 
may  seem — except  a  couple  of  lectures  by 
a  professor  and  some  study  by  a  little 
group  of  nine  young  officers,  when  the 
cadets,  to  say  nothing  of  the  officers,  are 
supposed  to  be  learning  the  art  of  war. 
That  in  itself  is  the  most  striking  proof 
of  the  lack  of  the  military  spirit  which  is 
the  chief  evil  in  the  army,  and  for  which 
Congress  is  not  responsible. 

And  what  are  co.det3,  and  what  is  the 
public  to  think  of  the  grave  scandal 
which  has  just  been  developed  at  the 
trial  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Goodier  now 
going  on  in  San  Francisco,  at  which  of- 
ficers have  sworn  that  certain  of  their 
brother-officers  of  the  Aviation  Section 
have  been  drawing  the  35  per  cent, 
increase  of  regular  pay,  which  is  by 
law  awarded  to  officers  who  are  risking 
their  lives  by  actually  making  ascen- 
sions, when  they  could  not  even  handle 
an  aeroplane?  It  was  charged,  under  oath, 
that  Captain  Cowan,  commanding  the 
Aviation  School  at  San  Diego,  had  been 
drawing  $113  a  month  extra  pay  since 
July,  1913,  although  not  capable  of  tak- 
ing a  machine  into  the  air  alone,  and 
Captain  Cowan  has  admitted  that  he 
drew  this  unearned  pay  for  twenty- 
five  months!  Does  this  not  again 
suggest  the  need  of  a  higher  standard  of 
conduct  by  officers  towards  their  Gov- 
ernment, or  at  least  a  new  kind  of  pre- 
paredness for  an  officer's  career? 

The  truth  is  that  in  many  directions  re- 
sources available  are  knowingly  diverted 
from  military  to  non-military  purposes, 
as  for  instance  in  the  matter  of  trans- 


portation; we  have  not  modern  military 
transportation,  but  plenty  of  money  for 
busses  and  ambulances  and  non-military 
vehicles.  They  even  run  a  bus  line  from 
one  end  of  West  Point  to  the  other.  Into 
the  effect  of  all  this  upon  the  enlisted 
men  of  the  army  and  their  free  use  for 
non-military  purposes,  such  as  officers' 
servants,  care-takers,  etc.,  there  Is  not 
space  to  touch  In  this  article;  but  every- 
one who  knows  the  army,  knows  what 
an  abuse  it  is,  and  how  it  reduces  the 
number  of  men  available  for  military 
drills.  It  verges  dangerously  near  the 
line  of  "honest  graft,"  which  reminds  me 
that  when  the  camp  at  Texas  City  of  a 
whole  division  of  our  troops  was  broken  up 
by  the  cyclone  in  August  last  there  were 
downright  charges  by  a  service  Journal 
that  no  worse  place  for  military  purposes 
could  have  been  selected  .than  the  site  of 
this  camp,  as  to  which  this  defender  of 
preparedness  declared  there  were  grave 
rumors  of  real  graft 

It  is  interesting  to  note,  too,  that  the 
storm  nipped  in  the  bud  as  it  were, 
the  erection  of  several  large  dancing 
pavilions  and  club  houses  that  were  being 
built  by  the  troops — military  duty  again 
— for  the  use  of  themselves  some  nights 
in  the  week,  and  of  their  officers  the 
others.  I  have  been  trying  my  best  to 
recall,  if  I  ever  heard  of  dance-halls 
being  erected  by  French  or  German 
regiments,  and  I  cannot  remember  that 
I  ever  did. 

THE  BEST   MATERIAL  ON  EARTH. 

Now  the  maddening  thing  about  all 
this  is  that  we  can  do  a  great  deal  bet- 
ter if  we  wish  to,  for  we  have  the  best 
material  on  earth  out  of  which  to  build 
armies.  No  one  surpasses  the  American 
in  natural  adaptability  and  the  ability 
to  think  for  himself.  Take  the  story  of 
Funston's  Kansas  regiment.  It  is  ex» 
actly  like  that  of  hundreds  of  volunteer 
regiments  in  the  Civil  War,  but  it  la 
an  amazing  tale  of  resourcefulness,  of 
daring,  dash,  and  Yankee  ingenuity,  and 
natural  born  soldiering,  without  much 
drill  and  next  to  no  discipline.  These 
fine  qualities  are  there  and  available. 
Why  do  we  not  get  them  in  peace  times? 
Moreover,  there  are  a  number  of  able 
officers  in  our  service  who  see  the  needs 
and  deplore  the  whole  present  situation, 
and  would  do  differently  if  they  could, 
who  do  not  believe  in  the  Government's 
buying  of  polo  ponies  and  foxhounds 
or  running  a  lot  of  costly  suburban  com- 
munities, but  would  like  to  train  real 
soldiers.  Why  is  it  that  for  an  ex- 
penditure far  out  of  proportion  to  what 
the  German  army  costs — we  have  put 
according  to  a  statement  of  Chairman 
Hay  of  the  House  Military  Affairs  Com- 
mittee, $1,007,410,270.48  into  the  army  in 
the  last  ten  fiscal  years,  1905  to  1915, 
which  is  not  so  bad  for  a  niggardly  Con- 
gress— we  do  not  get  a  regular  army  as 
good  man  for  man  as  that  of  the  Ger- 
man and  the  French? 

Incidently,  the'  taxpayer  should  ask 
himself  whether  he  ought  to  heed  the 
advocates  of  preparedness  in  adding  more 
sums  to  the  frightful  waste  that  is  going 
on.  without  the  slightest  assurance  that 
he  will  have  a  bit  more  efficient  or  more 
military  army  than  he  has  to-day.  It  is 
throwing  good  money  after  bad. 


vTHE   QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


THE  PRESENT  MILITARY  FOUNDATION 

Defects  in  the  Existing  Organization  of  the  Army— More  Money  Does 

Not  Assure  Greater  Efficiency — Heaven-Sent  Opportunity 

Neglected  by  President  and  Secretary  of  War 


CONGRESSMAN  HAY,  Chairman  of 
the  House  Committee  on  Military 
Affairs,  recently  wrote  in  the  Sun- 
day Magazine  of  the  liberal  $101,000,000 
appropriated  by  Congress  for  the  army 
for  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30,  1915, 
and  declared: 

"To  say  that  the  use  of  such  money  in 
the  hands  of  officers  of  the  United  States 
Army  does  not  make  us  efficient  In  a 
military  sense,  is  to  attack  unjustifiably 
the  ability  of  a  set  of  men  famous  the 
world  over  for  their  contributions  to  mili- 
tary science." 

What  could  be  more  preposterous?  One 
might  as  well  assume  that  because  $200,- 
000,000  a  year  is  spent  by  such  honorable 
and  patriotic  gentlemen  as  compose  the 
Board  of  EsUmate  of  New  York  for  the 
city's  upkeep,  therefore  every  cent  Is 
wisely  and  economically  disbursed!  We 
know  it  is  not;  we  know  that  it  is  hon- 
estly disbursed,  but  every  one  is  aware 
that  savings  could  be  made;  that  legisla- 
tive enactments  require  a  good  deal  of 
expenditure  that  the  city  officials  would 
never  sanction;  that  bad  business  meth- 
ods of  the  past  take  their  toll,  and  that 
there  are  leaks  and  wastes  in  plenty 
which  can  only  gradually  be  eliminated 
by  that  slow  introduction  of  better  meth- 
ods adopted  after  most  careful  study  and 
inquiry,  which  is  now  going  on. 

So  in  the  army;  every  one  knows  that 
honesty  prevails;  that  grafting  is  al- 
most unknown  and  that  an  embezzle- 
ment among  officers  is  of  the  rarest  Yet 
every  one  should  also  be  aware  that 
despite  the  enormous  sums  voted  we 
have  very  small  military  results  to  show 
for  the  $100,000,000  which  we  have  been 
spending  annually,  on  an  average,  dur- 
ing the  last  ten  years.  In  that  period 
our  army  has  averaged  about  85,000  men. 
It  cost,  therefore,  over  $1,000  a  man  to 
provide  the  necessary  arms,  quarters, 
pay,  supplies,  fortifications,  etc.,  for  a 
force  of  that  size,  and  the  taxpayer  Is 
without  guarantee  whatever  that  Ms 
army  is  efficient.  Pacifists,  militarists, 
and  Secretaries  of  War,  all  are  united  In 
saying  that  we  do  not  begin  to  get  what 
we  pay  for;  that  the  army  Is  wasteful 
and  extravagant  because  of  antiquated 
and  red  tape  business  methods,  the 
slowness  of  disbursements,  the  extrava- 
gant expenditure  characteristic  of  most 
Government  bureaus,  the  placing  of  the 
emphasis  upon  luxurious  accommodations 
and  private  comforts  rather  than  upon 
absolute  military  efficiency,  and  partic- 
ularly because  of  the  interference  of  pol- 
iticians. Under  the  circumstances,  for 
Congressman  Hay  to  point  to  his  $101,- 
000,000  and  swear  we  are  therefore  mili- 
tarily efficient  Is  as  absurd  as  to  as- 
sume that  if  Congress  votes  $180,000,000 
or  $200,000,000  this  year  for  further  pre- 
paredness we  shall  get  greater  efficiency 
at  the  very  hands  and  by  the  very  meth- 


ods   that   have    been    causing   us   waste 
and  extravagance  heretofore. 

MORE     MONEY    DOESN'T    GUARANTEE    EFFI- 
CIENCY. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to 
assume  that  we  shall  even  get  a  greater 
degree  of  military  efficiency.  A  poor 
army  does  not  become  a  good  army  in 
any  country  because  you  vote  It,  or  give 
it.  more  men,  more  guns,  and  more  am- 
munition. Russia  has  demonstrated  that, 
not  only  In  this  war,  but  long  before 
this  war  hove  In  sight 

It  is  precisely  here  that  Mr.  Garrison 
and  President  Wilson  have  thrown  away 
their  great  opportunity — an  almost 
heaven-sent  opportunity — to  reform  and 
overhaul  the  whole  military  establish- 
ment. If  they  had  said  to  the  country 
and  to  Congress: 

"This  whole  thing  is  preposterous,  be- 
cause our  methods  are  wrong  and  the 
real  military  spirit  is  lacking;  we  shall 
not  recommend  or  ask  the  voting  of  a 
dollar  additional  until  you  overhaul  the 
entire  system,  do  away  with  the  political 
forts,  put  a  stop  to  the  whole  business 
of  building  extravagant  suburban  vil- 
lages for  our  troops,  and  thoroughly  in- 
vestigate the  entire  military  situation. 
When  you  have  done  this  and  cut  mil- 
lions upon  millions  out  of  our  present 
Army  bill,  we  shall  recommend  the  ad- 
ditional defences  which  we  think  the  sea- 
coast  needs." 

It  is  a  double  blunder  that  they  have 
committed,  which  smacks  plainly  both  of 
short-sightedness  and  lack  of  statesman- 
ship. In  deciding  to  arm  further  at  this 
stage  of  the  world  war  without  awaiUng 
its  outcome,  they  have  in  part  thrown 
away  the  commanding  position  of  the 
United  States  as  the  one  great  nation 
that  was  not  arming,  and,  therefore,  was 
in  the  best  position  to  advocate  universal 
disarmament  at  the  close  of  the  war; 
and  they  have  neglected  the  best  chance 
for  a  great  Internal  reform,  for  the  in- 
troduction of  scientific  management  in 
one  branch  of  the  Government,  that  will 
probably  ever  come  to  them. 

BUILDING    ON    BAD    FOUNDATION. 

With  an  unsatisfactory  and  out  of  date 
miUtary  foundation,  never  well  built,  as 
was  conclusively  shown  in  1898,  they  are 
preparing  to  build  upon  that  foundation 
an  enormously  costly  additional  super- 
structure which  will  inevitably  partake  of 
the  weaknesses  of  the  foundation.  With 
the  only  bit  of  scientific  management  the 
army  has  ever  known — that  introduced 
into  some  of  our  arsenals  by  General 
Crozier,  the  chief  of  ordnance — practical- 
ly ended  by  the  dictation  of  labor  unions, 
it  is  a  crying  shame  that  the  Secretary  and 
President  did  not  unitedly  stand  for  in- 
troducing this  system  throughout  the 
army.  The  country  would  have  listened 
to  them   as  one   man  because   it   would 


have  recognized  at  once  that  this  is  the 
first  step,  and  the  best  step,  toward  na- 
tional prepardedness,  if  we  really  need 
any  preparednesa 

More  than  that,  groups  of  fine  young 
officers  would  have  arisen  in  the  service 
to  cooperate  and  even  to  take  the  lead. 
The  whole  military  spirit  of  the  army 
would  have  been  quickened  and  rejuve- 
nated. It  would  have  ohtained  an  en- 
tirely new  sense  of  its  duty  and  responsi- 
bility to  the  Government  if  required  to 
see  to  it  that  not  only  100  cents 
are  obtained  for  every  dollar  ex- 
pended, but  that  at  least  90  per 
cent,  of  that  dollar  is  given  to  construc- 
tive military  expenditure.  Such  a  re- 
organization would  have  given  the  army 
new  life  and  new  pride  in  the  service. 

If  Congress  knows  its  business  and  is 
not  stampeded  into  voting  the  President's 
programme,  by  the  party  lash;  if  it  is 
actuated  by  purely  patriotic  considera- 
tions and  really  desires  efficient  prepared- 
ness, if  It  is  not  going  to  vote  large  sums 
under  newspaper  clan  ,r  with  the  quiet 
purpose  of  securing  as  large  a  part  of 
that  expenditure  for  particular  political 
bailiwicks,  it  will  itself  insist  upon  such 
an  overhaul  and  investigation.  If  that 
sounds  too  much  like  a  counsel  of  per- 
fection; if  it  is  expecting  too  much  of 
our   Congress,   so  much   the  worse. 

THE    GREED    FOR    "PORK." 

I  was  reliably  told  in  Washington  that 
Congressmen  were  already  serving  notice 
on  Mr.  Garrison  that  he  would  not  get 
a  dollar  from  them  for  preparedness  un- 
less they  were  assured  that  their  especi- 
ally pet  political  forts,  or  arsenals,  or 
what  not,  were  to  be  left  undisturbed.  Dis- 
couraging as  that,  if  true,  would  be,  and 
as  the  outlook  for  reform  is,  it  is  plainly 
the  duty  of  Congress  to  inquire  what 
has  become  of  the  enormous  sums  al- 
ready voted.  The  German  Kaiser  is  said 
to  have  remarked  that  his  army  and  navy 
did  not  cost  him  more  than  ours,  including 
pensions.  This  Congress  ought  to  as- 
certain, and  the  reasons  why  this  Is  so, 
beside  the  superficial  ones  that  lie  on 
the  surface.  Let  it  find  out,  for  Instance, 
whether  many  expenditures  made,  like 
that  at  Governor's  Island,  have  not  ac- 
tually hindered  the  obtaining  of  real  mili- 
tary results.  Let  it  not  vote  two  or  three 
hundred  millions  more  in  the  two  years 
of  its  life  without  the  most  careful  ex- 
amination of  the  past  and  the  most  care- 
ful supervision  of  future  expenditures. 

It  does  not  pay  in  this  matter  to  trust 
to  the  experts.  The  writer  was,  perhaps, 
the  first  journalist  in  this  country  to 
advocate  a  General  Staff,  but  that  august 
body  has  been  vastly  more  concerned 
with  planning  increases  of  the  army  (with 
unavoidable  benefits  in  the  way  of  in- 
creased rank  to  its  members)  than  with 
pounding  away  in  season  and  out  of  sea- 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PREPAREDNESS 


9 


son.  upon  the  deficiencies  In  the  service 
which  would  still  stand  in  the  way  of 
anything  like  an  efficient  army  if  it  were 
increased  to  500,000  men  to-morrow. 

One  of  the  ablest  officers  in  the  service, 
a  graduate  of  West  Point,  of  nearly  forty 
years'  service,  who  does  not  share  the 
writer's  views  as  to  preparedness,  says 
frankly  that,  as  long  as  the  army  is  "self- 
governed  and  self-inspected,  it  can  never 
be  trusted  to  govern  itself  well."  He  in- 
sists that  there  must  be  more  stringent 
and  direct  civilian  control  by  Congress; 
but  he  admits,  of  course,  that  heretofore 
Congress  has  declined  to  accept  its  re- 
sponsibility in  an  unselfish  spirit.  He 
believes  that  no  expert  opinion,  whether 
from  the  General  Staff  or  any  one  else, 
should  be  accepted  without  the  most  rigid 
outside  scrutiny.  If,  as  he  says,  the 
inspections  in  the  army  are  "usually 
farces,  often  overruled  and  restricted  by 
order,  so  that  they  tend  to  degenerate 
into  merely  formal  affairs  carried  on  In 
order  to  see  that  the  routine  of  the  ser- 
vice Is  adhered  to,"  there  may  well  be 
reason  to  assume  that  the  higher  au- 
thorities in  the  army  are  not  as  keen 
to  remedy  any  defects  as  they  should  be. 
Thus,  Gen.  Wood  has  been  making  hun- 
dreds of  speeches  in  the  past  year,  urg- 
ing more  troops  and  more  reserves;  I 
have  read  many  reports  of  those  speeches, 
but  I  have  not  found  in  one  any  refer- 
ence to  what  is  the  matter  with  the 
army  itself. 

It  is  also  suggested  that,  according  to 
an  army  officer  who  ought  to  know,  the 
first  plan  for  an  increase  In  the  army 
that  came  from  the  General  Staff  to  Sec- 
retary Garrison  began  with  a  provision 
for  a  full  general  and  several  lieutenant- 
generals,  major-generals  by  the  dozen, 
and  brigadiers  by  the  score.  If  this  officer 
is  correct,  these  were  not  recommenda- 
tions that  really  aimed  at  increased  ef- 
ficiency. 

DETAILS    SHOULD    BE    SCRUTINIZED. 

How  important  It  is  that  the  details 
of  any  Increase  scheme  should  be  care- 
fully studied,  appears  from  the  question 
how  shall  the  army  be  enlarged.  Sup- 
posing 30.000  men  are  to  be  added:  Shall 
this  be  done  by  adding  30  more  regi- 
ments of  1,000  men  each?  Most  officers 
would  say  "yes."  They  would  point  out 
that  regiments  cannot  be  raised  hastily  in 
war-time,  and  quickly  drilled,  and  would 
insist  that  we  cannot  have  too  many  extra 
officers. 

Probably  most  of  the  men  giving  this 
advice  would  not  be  consciously  influ- 
enced by  the  fact  that  this  would  mean  a 
promotion  of  30  lieutenant-colonels,  and 
60  majors  and  150  captains,  and  that 
therefore  they  would  inevitably  profit 
thereby;  some  might  even,  and  probably 
would,  regret  that  their  own  fortunes 
were   tied  up   with   the   question. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  matter. 
European  regiments  number  from  2,500 
to  3,000  men;  in  Germany  there  are 
more  than  200  men  in  a  company  in 
peace  time  so  that  a  subaltern  commands 
a  "Zug"  of  about  70  men.  We  allow 
three  officers  to  a  company  and  the  war 
time  strength  of  that  company  is  112  and 
of  a  regiment  approximately  1,300.  Why 
should  we  continue  to  stick  at  this  figure? 


The  Civil  War  showed  how  rapidly  regi- 
ments of  1,000  men  thinned  down  to  tiny 
battalions  of  350.  In  one  campaign,  in 
1864,  a  Connecticut  heavy  artillery  regi- 
ment serving  as  Infantry,  shrank  from 
1,200  to  400  men  In  about  six  weeks 
time.  The  Canadian  Princess  Patricia 
Regiment  is  known  to  have  been  reduced 
to  135  In  a  fortnight  at  the  front.  In 
peace  time  our  regular  regiments 
are  weak  at  a  strength  of  800,  and 
few  of  them  approximate  that  size.  They 
usually  average  between  600  and  760. 

Every  officer  knows  that  this  is  an  in- 
efficient number.  In  a  recent  article 
which  appeared  in  the  Journal  of  the 
V.  8.  Cavalry  Association,  Captain  S.  D. 
Rockenbach,  11th  Cavalry,  told  some 
wholesome  truths  not  often  seen  in 
print,  at  least  by  laymen,  as  to  the 
present  organization.  He  writes  as 
follows: 

"My  testimony  after  nearly  twenty-four 
years  of  commissioned  service  is  that 
under  the  organization  and  system  w» 
have,  it  Is  Impossible  to  make  a  troop 
efficient  for  war.  If  It  is  the  overhead 
cost  that  counts,  why  can't  we  get  the  men 
to  work  with?  Supposing  we  got  the  41 
[men  of  a  troop]  ready  for  combat  with- 
out stunting  their  mental  and  physical 
growth,  what  would  be  left  of  them  In 
a  week's,  a  month's  campaign,  without 
a  depot  squadron  to  send  up  trained  men 
and  horses?  We  delude  ourselves  with 
the  idea  that  we  have  a  great  excess 
of  regular  officers  in  time  of  peace;  we 
must,  but  we  must  have  something  to 
train  them  with.  I  would  have  learned 
more  in  two  years  with  a  full  troop, 
In  a  full  squadron,  in  a  full  regiment, 
In  a  full  brigade,  in  a  full  division,  than 
I  have  in  ten  times  that  length  of  time 
under  the  existing  conditions.  Yiet  the 
American  public  expects  the  regular  of- 
ficer to  be  supertralned  in  the  art  and 
science  of  war  practically." 

INCREASE    EXISTING     UNITS. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  If  Captain  Rock- 
enbach were  asked  what  he  would  do 
with  30,000  more  men  for  the  army,  he 
would  put  them  into  the  existing  troops, 
squadrons,  regiments,  brigades,  and  divis- 
ions. That  would  be  real  scientific  man- 
agement both  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  army  and  the  point  of  view  of  the 
taxpaying  public  which  is  desirous  of 
efficiency  and  does  not  want  to  be  taxed 
for  colonels  and  majors  that  add  strength 
to  the  army  only  on  paper.  There  could 
be  no  clearer  illustration  of  the  point 
that  I  have  been  trying  to  drive  home 
in  this  entire  article;  that  the  foundation 
system  of  the  army  is  wrong  and  that 
piling  on  more  organizations  without 
remedying  the  defects  would  be  folly. 
Why  Is  it  not  the  proper  thing  to  raise 
our  regiments  to  2,400  or  3,000  men  at 
once  if  we  must  have  more  soldiers? 
It  is  Interesting  to  note  that  some  ad- 
vance towards  this  policy  appears  In  Mr. 
Garrison's  plan  to  have  three  of  the 
new  regular  regiments  he  proposes  re- 
cruited to  our  war  strength;  but  that  is 
less  than  half  the  peace  strength  of  some 
European  regiments.  If  additional  of- 
ficers are  needed,  let  Congress  provide 
them  separately  to  be  used  for  detached 
service  as  are  hundreds  of  officers  to-day 


who  are  away  from  regimental  work. 
It  Is  interesting  also  to  note  how  Cap- 
tain Rockenbach  arrives  at  the  figure 
of  41  men  cited  above,  which  he  says 
could  not  be  trained  for  a  month  under 
war  conditions  without  needing  reserves 
of  men  and  horses.  This  is  his  very 
important  analysis  of  an  average  troop 
of  cavalry  as  it  reports  for  duty  in  our 
army  to-day. 

Troop  N,  Xth  U.  S.  Cavalry,  has  on  the  24th 
of  May: 

Aggregate     81 

Present   and   absent    73 

Training    remounts    13 

Charge    of    stables    2 

In  quarters — 1  mess  sgt.,  2  cooks,  2  room 

orderlies     6 

D.   8-,  absent  sick  and  furlough   8 

Recruits     1 

Sick    8 

S.  D.,  veterinary  hospital  and  exchange..  2 

Machine-gun    troop    2 

Headquarter    troop    1 

Total  absent  from  drill    (combat)    ....  35 
Total  present  for  drill  (combat)    41 

The  only  criticism  of  this  that  most 
officers  would  make  is  that  he  does  not 
allow  sufficiently  for  detached  service,  for 
men  on  guard  duty,  acting  as  servants 
to  officers,  gardeners,  etc.  But  as  is  the 
strength  of  the  troop  so  is  the  strength 
of  the   regiment. 

Everybody  who  has  served  knows  the 
thrill  and  the  inspiration  that  come  from 
full  ranks  and  large  numbers.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  Capt.  Rockenbach  writes 
that  "we  do  not  admit  that  the  regular 
army  is  inefficient,  but,  when  we  say 
that  it  is  efficient,  the  American  public 
should  understand  our  mental  reserva- 
tions. It  Is  efficient  not  considering  any 
possible  or  probable  use  against  modern 
troops,  only  up  to  60  per  cent  of  Its 
total  strength,  and  it  would  not  last  a 
brief  campaign  against  a  modern  army, 
even  could  we  find  one  so  small  as  to 
take  us  seriously  and  fight  us.  .  . 
There  should  be  no  compromise,  either 
a  proper  army  or  none  at  all,  and  once 
for  all  remove  the  delusion  from  the 
minds  of  the  public  as  to  their  protec- 
tion." 

There  are  dozens  of  officers  who  share 
Capt.  Rockenbach's  feeling;  there  are 
dozens  of  problems,  just  like  this  on« 
of  where  the  proposed  increase  of  men 
if  voted  should  be  placed,  that  ought  not 
to  be  decided  offhand  either  by  Presi- 
dent or  Secretary  or  Congress,  and  the 
last  persons  whose  advice  should  b6 
taken  as  final  in  this  matter  are  the 
men  who  are  responsible  in  the  army  for 
the  present  system  which  Capt.  Rock- 
enback  so  clearly  thinks  a  grave  mis- 
take. 

If  the  system  of  the  regular  army  Is  a 
mistake,  or  is  inefficient  in  any  degree, 
is  it  not  absolute  folly  to  graft  upon 
it  the  reserve  army  of  400,000  men 
which  Mr.  Garrison  and  the  General  Staff 
have  proposed  and  the  President  has 
accepted?  What  guarantee  is  there  that 
the  400,000  reserves  will  be  relatively 
even  as  efficient  as  our  regulars?  How 
can  we  avoid  the  conclusion  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  Congress  to  make  our  ex- 
isting system  modern,  efficient,  and  real- 
ly worth  while  before  it  adds  one  dol- 
lar to  the  one  hundred  millions  it  now 
blindly  lavishes?  The  road  to  real  pre- 
paredness, if  we  must  prepare,  leads  no 
other   way. 


10 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


SOME  OBSTACLES  TO  EFFICIENCY  IN  THE  ARMY 


Despite  West  Point  Training  and  Ostensibly  Rigid  Examinations,  Many 
Unfit  Continue  in  Service — Shining  Exceptions  of  the  Ordnance 
Corps — Effects  of  Certain  Social  Conditions 


WHY  is  it  there  is  not  greater  mili- 
tary efficiency  in  our  regular 
army  to-day?  The  average  lay- 
man can  understand  that  politics  has 
done  serious  damage  to  the  service,  and 
much  money  is  wasted  through  the  con- 
struction of  costly  barracks  which  are 
in  effect  costly  suburban  villages.  He 
knows,  too,  that  all  Government  depart- 
ments are  apt  to  be  loosely  administered 
as  contrasted  with  private  concerns  or- 
ganized to  make  money. 

What  the  layman  cannot  understand  is 
why  there  should  not  be  among  the  of- 
ficers of  the  service  a  high  standard  of 
professional  efficiency.  Are  not  40  per 
cent  of  the  officers  graduates  of  West 
Point?  Have  not  hundreds  of  them  at- 
tended the  graduate  schools  in  the  army? 
Are  there  not  examinations  for  promo- 
tion? Are  not  civilian  candidates  and 
those  who  would  rise  from  the  ranks 
rigidly  tested?  How  can  it  be,  therefore, 
that  the  army  itself  is  inefficient? 

To  this  the  answer  is:  Primarily  be- 
cause the  individual  officer  is  held  prac- 
tically to  no  standard  of  professional  ef- 
ficiency, and  this  despite  examinations 
for   promotion,   efficiency   records,   etc. 

The  law  calling  for  the  examination 
of  all  officers  below  the  rank  of  major 
before  they  can  be  promoted  to  the  next 
highest  rank  has,  it  is  true,  existed  ever 
since  1891.  At  the  present  time  there 
are  under  suspension  for  promotion  for 
one  year  one  captain  and  three  first 
lieutenants  who  have  failed  in  their  first 
examinations,  but  during  all  these  years 
since  the  law  was  passed  only  seventeen 
line  officers  have  been  dropped  from  the 
army  for  failure  to  qualify  professional- 
ly. Fully  nine-tenths  of  those  suspended 
are  passed  on  reexamination,  and  in  one 
case  an  officer  who  was  discharged  from 
the  artillery  arm  and  reappointed  to  the 
cavalry  arm  has  been  serving  acceptably 
ever  since. 

Now,  it  would  be  most  gratifying  if 
we  could  assume  that  this  record  meant 
that  the  high  professional  ability  of  the 
officers  of  the  army  was  easily  demonstra- 
ble, for  it  would  show  that  there  is  vast- 
ly less  professional  mortality  among  our 
officers  than  among  a  similar  group 
of  lawyers  and  doctors,  to  speak  of  only 
two  other  expert  professions. 

BUI  MANY  UNFIT  SLIP  THROUGH. 

But  every  Secretary  of  War  knows, 
and  every  officer  knows,  that  the  exam- 
ining board  is  not  nearly  as  rigid  as  it 
ought  to  be,  and  that  many  a  man  slips 
through  who  is  professionally  unfit  to 
continue  in  the  service.  Either  because 
the  board  does  not  set  high  enough 
standards  or  because  it  has  become  dis- 
couraged by  political  interference  with 
the  verdicts  of  other  examining  boards, 
or  because  out  of  a  kind-heartedness  to- 
ward a  fellow-officer,  which  is  one  of  the 
greatest   weaknesses   of    the   service,   it 


sometimes  gives  a  man  a  passing  mark 
for  the  sake  of  his  future  and  that  of 
his  wife  and  his  children. 

It  is  unfortunately  the  truth  that  there 
Is  no  punishment  for  an  officer  who  is 
professionally  slack  or  lazy  or  who  is 
unfit,  precisely  as  there  is  no  real  re- 
ward for  an  officer  who  does  his  rou- 
tine work  zealously,  studies  incessantly 
to  keep  himself  abreast  of  military  de- 
velopment at  home  and  abroad,  and  seeks 
in  every  way  to  fit  himself  for  high  com- 
mand. There  is  a  saying  that  to  lose 
his  commission  an  officer  must  either 
commit  a  crime  or  go  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  toleration  in  bad  personal  habits. 
Let  him  be  as  dull  as  an  ox,  let  him  be 
temperamentally  unfitted  to  command 
men,  let  him  be  so  crabbed  and  narrow 
as  to  be  a  nuisance  whenever  he  fills  a 
position  of  independent  command,  he  is 
still  sure  of  his  rank  if  his  personal 
habits  are  exemplary — that  is,  if  he  does 
not  drink,  or  steal,  or  offend  against 
other  commandments.  Moreover,  he  will 
rise  steadily  in  rank  and  retire  with  a 
handsome  pension  at  the  end  of  his  ser- 
vice. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  man  who  has 
soldierly  instincts,  is  devoted  to  his  ca- 
reer, and  is  willing  to  work  day  and  night 
for  personal  advancement  and  the  bene- 
fit of  the  service — there  are  many  such 
in  the  army — soon  finds  that  nothing  that 
he  can  do  will  advance  him  except  in 
rare,  exceptional  cases.  In  the  past, 
such  an  officer  has  needed  political  in- 
fluence to  get  him  ahead.  It  is  true 
that  at  all  times  he  won  the  esteem  of 
those  with  whom  he  came  in  contact 
who  valued  a  good  officer.  At  times  some 
bureau  chief  or  some  general  during  the 
Spanish  War  was  able  to  pick  out  such 
an  officer  for  temporary  volunteer  rank 
or  for  some  important  assignment.  Such 
an  officer,  too,  might  find  his  way  to 
the  War  College  and  the  General  Staff, 
but  the  chances  have  been  that  he  must 
sit  by  and  see  an  officer  like  Gen.  Clar- 
ence R.  Edwards  jump  from  captain  to 
Drigadier-general,  not  because  of  any 
military  service  of  distinction  whatever, 
but  because  he  was  an  excellent  chief  of 
the  Bureau  of  Insular  Affairs — non-mili- 
tary service  again — and  a  warm  personal 
friend  of  William  H  Taft.  Such  an  in- 
cident as  that  alone  gravely  discourages 
many  a  professionally  zealous  officer. 

HOW  EXAMINATIONS  HAVE  WORKED. 

Yet  high  hopes  were  builded  upon  the 
examination  for  promotion  when  it  was 
instituted.  The  examiners  were  given  a 
wide  latitude,  and  as  it  often  happened 
that  a  man  was  examined  far  away  from 
his  regiment,  it  was  hoped  that  so- 
cial influence  would  be  reduced  to  a  min- 
imum. But  it  hasn't  worked  that  way, 
and  the  standards  of  examination  have 
varied  so  much  here  and  there — that  is, 
an  examining  board  at  Manila  might  be    »o 


much  more  rigid  than  one  at  Fort  Leav- 
enworth— as  to  work  an  injustice  to  the 
service.  Hence,  for  a  time  an  effort  was 
made  to  have  all  officers  in  continental 
America  examined  by  one  board  in  Fort 
Leavenworth.  But  this  too  has  been 
abandoned  and  men  are  constantly  pass- 
ed upward  who  ought  not  to  be  ad- 
vanced. Moreover,  it  is  ridiculous  to  say 
that  because  a  man  has  qualified  as  ma- 
jor, therefore  he  does  not  need  to  be 
tested  as  to  his  fitness  for  lieutenant- 
colonel  or  colonel  or  brigadier-general  or 
major-general.  There  is  no  reason  what- 
ever why  examinations  should  stop  with 
the  captain,  but  every  reason  that  more 
and  more  severe  tests  should  be  applied, 
as  officers  rise  higher  in  rank  and  as- 
sume increasing  responsibilities  for  the 
welfare  and  discipline  and  efficiency  of 
their  subordinates  in  peace  and  for  their 
lives,  as  well,  in  war  time. 

It  seems  to  be  generally  admitted  to- 
day that  the  German  army  is  the  most 
efficient  in  the  world.  It  is  the  German 
army  which  is  most  rigid  in  its  examina- 
tion of  officers  and  its  elimination  of  men 
who  are  unfit.  No  major  can  become  a 
lieutenant-colonel  until  he  has  demon- 
strated that  he  can  fulfil  the  functions  of 
a  lieutenant-colonel  under  the  eyes  of  a 
board  of  officers  whose  devotion  to  the 
service  is  so  great  that  they  do  not  hes- 
itate to  cut  him  off  and  end  his  career 
if  he  does  not  qualify.  A  German  major 
is  expected  to  show  that  he  is  fitted  to 
be  a  colonel,  and  a  lieutenant-colonel  that 
he  can,  if  necessary,  take  hold  of  a  bri- 
gade. Social  influence  does  not  avail, 
neither  does  rank,  and  to  a  lesser  de- 
gree the  same  has  been  true  in  France, 
but  that  it  is  in  a  lesser  degree  is  brought 
out  by  the  large  number  of  French  gen- 
erals who  have  been  summarily  retired 
by  Gen.  Joffre. 

When  President  Taft  made  Capt.  Ed- 
wards a  brigadier-general  because  he  had 
been  an  excellent  bureaucrat  in  Wash- 
ington, he  did  not  know  whether  Gen. 
Edwards  really  had  the  qualities  of  a 
general  or  not,  because  Capt  Edwards 
had  never  even  commanded  a  regiment, 
much  less  a  brigade.  There  was  nothing 
to  indicate  that  Gen.  Edwards,  if  sud- 
denly given  command  of  a  brigade  in 
Mexico,  would  demonstrate  that  he  had 
the  capacity  for  the  handling  of 
masses  of  men,  or  had  the  personal 
quality  of  quick  decision  in  emergencies 
which  the  successful  general  must  have. 
Perhaps  Gen.  Edwards  would  prove  to 
have  these  qualities.  It  is  extraordinary 
how  many  of  our  haphazard  generals 
have  become  valuable.  But  that  is  luck, 
or  is  due  to  American  adaptability  under 
responsibility,  and  is  not  because,  but  in 
spite  of,  as  vicious  a  system  of  appoint- 
ment as  could  be  imagined. 

GRATIFYING    SIGNS    OF    BEFOBM. 

Lately,  it  is  gratifying  to  record,  Sec- 


THE   QUESTION  OF  PREPAREDNESS 


11 


retary  Garrison  has  adopted  the  policy 
of  promoting  colonels  to  brigadier-gen- 
erals, not  because  of  any  conspicuous 
non-military  service  or  in  response  to 
political  pressure  or  social  influence  or 
friendship,  but  on  the  recommendation 
of  the  various  generals,  the  General  Staff 
corps,  etc.  But,  gratifying  as  this  de- 
parture is,  it  does  not  in  itself  give  any 
assurances  of  stability,  nor  does  it  help 
to  weed  out  the  inefflcients  in  the  lower 
grades. 

Among   the     officers     who   have   been 
much  stirred  by  this  state  of  affairs  is 
the  chief  of  ordnance,  Brig.-Gen.  William 
Crozier.     In   season   and  out  of   season, 
on    every    occasion,    he    has    urged    that 
we  introduce  into  our  army  a  system  of 
promotion,  not  by  seniority,  that  is,  lon- 
gevity, but  by  selection,  the  selection    of 
the  worthy  and  industrious  officers  and 
the    elimination    of    the    unworthy.     He 
aims,  in  other  words,  at  the  introduction 
of  a  merit  system,  and  in  principle  every 
one  must  agree  with  him,  particularly  be- 
cause, as  will  be  shown  later,  he  has  ap- 
plied   those    principles    to    his    own,    the 
Ordnance    Corps.    If    it    could    be    car- 
ried    out     without     favoritism     or     so- 
cial or  political  influence,  it  would  make 
an  ideal   system.     The   difficulty   is   that 
in  a  republic  it  seems  almost  impossible 
to   constitute   a   board   of   officers   which 
shall  be  free  from  these  hampering  in- 
fluences, and  a  system  of  selection  which 
was  influenced  by  other  than  purely  mili- 
tary  considerations   would   be   more   de- 
moralizing than  the  present  one. 

FAILURE  OF   NAVY   PLUCKING  BOABD. 
The  experience  of  the  navy's   "pluck- 
ing  board"   does   not  lead   to   the   belief 
that  the  right  kind  of  a  board  to  promote 
by  selection  could  be  formed. 

Mr.  Roosevelt  and  many  others  were 
certain  when  this  navy  board  was  con- 
stituted in  1901   that  it  solved  the  diffi- 
culty in  the  navy,   and   that   the   board 
could  be  relied  upon  to  do  justice.     Yet 
the   last    Congress   abolished   the    board, 
whose  decisions  had  in  some  cases  caused 
the    bitterest    heart-burnings.      For    the 
army,  none  the  less,  it  appears  that  for 
the  present  the  best  policy  is  elimination 
for  military  unfitness  or  incapacity.  That 
is,  by  the  slow  process  of  improving  the 
moral  tone  of  the  service  the  promotion 
boards,  like  the  courts-martial,  must  be 
educated   up    to    performing   their   func- 
tions  without   thought   of   anything   but 
the  interests  of  the  service.     As  long  as 
this  is  not  done  the  army  personnel  will 
be  far  from  the  maximum  of  efficiency. 
As  long  as  it  is  not  done  all  the  money 
that  President  Wilson  and  Mr.  Garrison 
may   get    from    Congress   for    additional 
officers  and  men  will  not  in  a  single  re- 
spect improve  the  morale  of  the  army, 
but  will  merely  add  to  its  numbers.     It 
will  in  no  wise  give  us  a  more  efficient 
army  than  we  have  now,  for  true  pre- 
paredness   has    much    less    to    do    with 
numbers  than  it  has  with  the  spirit  and 
military  efficiency  of  our  army. 

Now,  Gen.  Crozier  is  not  merely  an 
officer  who  preaches;  he  practices  what 
he  preaches,  and  the  result  Is  that  the 
Ordnance  Corps,  over  which  he  presides, 
is  to-day  the  one  highly  efficient  branch 
of  the  army.  Why?  Because  he  can 
eliminate  unworthy  ofllcers  and  reward 
the  worthy  that  come  to  his  corps.    This 


is  due  to  the  fact  that,  barring  some  per- 
manent ones,  the  bulk  of  his  officers  are 
detailed  from  the  line,  after  a  most 
searching  examination,  for  periods  of 
four  years.  After  these  four  years  they 
must  go  back  to  the  cavalry  or  artil- 
lery or  infantry,  whence  they  came,  and 
serve  two  years  with  troops,  befor* 
being  again  eligible  for  re-detail  to  the 
Ordnance.  If  an  officer  did  not  do  well 
while  with  the  Ordnance,  Gen.  Crozier 
simply  forgets  his  existence;  he  has  no 
right  to  demand  a  re-detail.  If  he  is  a 
good  officer.  Gen.  Crozier  keeps  his  eye 
on  him  and  gets  him  back  when  the 
two  years  with  troops  are  up. 

Moreover,  Gen.  Crozier  made  his  corps 
especially  attractive  by  getting  from 
Congress  increased  rank  for  the  officers 
that  come  to  him.  That  Is,  if  a  second 
lieutenant  is  detailed  to  the  Ordnance, 
he  gets  the  rank  and  pay  of  a  first  lieu- 
tenant during  his  four  years  of  service; 
if  a  first  lieutenant  is  detailed  he  gets 
the  rank  and  pay  of  a  captain ;  if  it  is  a 
captain  who  goes  to  the  Ordnance,  he 
receives  the  rank  and  pay  of  a  major 
as  a  reward  for  his  ambition,  for  his 
zeal  in  volunteering  for  the  Ordnance, 
and  his  industry  in  fitting  himself  for 
the  searching  technical  examination. 

RECOGNIZED    BY.    PRIVATE    INDUSTRIES. 

I  am  one  of  those  who  think  that  the 
rush  to  secure  Gen.  Crozier's  officers  for 
civilian  arms  factories  this  year  is  in 
large  part  a  tribute  to  the  kind  of  men 
Gen.  Crozier  has  secured  by  his  merit 
system.  Even  in  these  boom  times  pri- 
vate concerns  that  have  to  earn  divi- 
dends pick  and  choose  their  superin- 
tendents, and  do  not  select  military  auto- 
mata for  responsible  positions. 

This  is  the  only  way  to-day  in  tlfe 
entire  army  in  which  an  officer  can  ad- 
vance himself  in  rank  and  pay  by  his 
own  industry  and  merit!  Surely,  before 
it  builds  further  upon  the  present  un- 
satisfactory military  foundation,  Congress 
ought  to  inquire  into  the  whole  situa- 
tion and  ask  Gen.  Crozier  and  others 
why  it  is  that  this  bit  of  scientific  man- 
agement cannot  In  one  form  or  another 
be  applied  to  the  entire  service. 

A  few  years  ago  another  device,  which, 
if  applied  to  the  entire  army  and  rigid- 
ly  enforced,   would  do   much   good,   was 
introduced  into   the  Engineer  Corps.     It 
was  provided  by  law  that,  when  an  of- 
ficer was  appointed  to  that  corps  as  a 
second    lieutenant     from     civil     life,     he 
should    serve    as    a    probationary    officer 
for  the  period  of   one  year,   at  the  ex- 
piration  of   which   he   could   be   dropped 
for  professional   incapacity,   moral  unfit- 
ness,  or,  what  is   even   more   important, 
temperamental  unfitness  for  the  military 
profession.     So  far  only  two  officers  have 
been    appointed    under    this    law,     and 
neither     has     been     dropped.       But     the 
scheme  is  an  admirable  one,  and,  as  has 
been  urged  by  Lieut.-Col.  Robert  H.  No- 
ble, of  the  infantry,  ought  to  be  applied 
to   all   second    lieutenants,    whether    ap- 
pointed from  the  ranks,  from  West  Point, 
or  from  civil  life.     There  would  be  some" 
considerable    chance    of    this    being    en- 
forced   because    a    new    officer    has    not 
formed  any  of  those  domestic  ties  which 
play  so  great  a  part  in  army  life  and 
in  the  decisions  of  its  boards  and  courts. 
The    War    Department    could    withhold 
from  such  an  officer  permission  to  marry. 


It  would  all  make  the  probationer  walk 
a  very  straight  line  during  his  first  year, 
and  work  very  hard.  While  a  choleric 
colonel  might  occasionally  do  an  injus- 
tice in  dropping  an  officer,  the  injustice 
would  be  slight  compared  to  the  good 
that  would  result  if  men  were  freely 
discharged  when  they  failed  to  show  in- 
dustry, good  character,  and  adaptability 
to  the  profession  of  soldiering.  The  Ger- 
mans call  some  of  their  candidates  for 
commissions  "Offlziersaspiranten" — which 
tells  the  whole  story. 

Congress  ought  not  to  add  thousands 
of  additional  officers  to  the  army  in  the 
year  1916  without  throwing  this  and 
other  safeguards  around  their  appoint- 
ment, for  nine-tenths  of  them  will  be 
inexperienced  and  with  only  the  slight- 
est military  training,  if  any.  Among 
them  will  be  many  temperamentally  un- 
fit or  unable  to  exercise  the  power  to 
command. 

ATHLETICS    AND   DOMESTICITY. 

There  are   officers  in   the    army     who 
think  that  athletics  and  domesticity  are 
injuring  the  service  to-day  as  much  as 
whiskey  did  in   the  old  days   when   the 
army  was  scattered  over  the  plaina   It 
is  unquestionably   true  that  the  provid- 
ing of  homes  for  officers  has  become  an 
almost  unmitigated  evil,  and  no   survey 
of  the  causes  of  the  army's  inefficiency 
would   be   complete  without   a  reference 
to  it     I  have  already  touched  upon  it. 
but  it  is  worth  while  to.  record  the  fact 
that  the  American  army  is  the  only  one 
that  makes  a  practice  of  providing  of- 
ficers' families  with  residences.  The  cus- 
tom   grew    up    in    the   days    of   frontier 
duty    and    Indian-fighting     when     forts 
were  forts  and  not  barracks  or  canton- 
ments.   Now    the   most   Important   posts 
are  in  or  near  cities  so  that  the  army 
could   make   vast   savings   If  It   allowed 
liberal   sums   for  rentals  and  made   the 
officers  live  in  the  towns.  This  might  not 
be  practical  in  Alaska  or  Panama  or  at 
certain   remote    coast   artillery   stations; 
but  If  the  Government  simply  abandon- 
ed the  policy  of  housing  officers'  families, 
it  would  save  enough  to  maintain  a  num- 
ber  of  regiments,   besides  doing      away 
with  a  large  amount  of  special  "duty"  as 
gardeners,    servants,   ice-suppliers,     bus- 
drivers,   postmen,   etc.,    a    detached   ser- 
vice   which,     as     already     pointed    out, 
leads  to  intense  dissatisfaction  among  the 
enlisted       men,     besides     depleting     the 
strength    of   companies.    In    some    cases 
it   has   led   in   fact   to   the   abandonment 
of    guard    duty.     To    one   familiar   with 
the  old  army  it  is  something  of  a  shock 
to  see  the  disappearance  of  sentries  and 
the   substitution   of  post   policemen;    for 
sentry  duty,  in  the  West  at  least,  was 
one  thing  that  was  never  slighted,  and  it 
has  heretofore  been  deemed  one  of  the 
most  important  functions  of  the  soldier. 
But  it  is  now  disappearing  as  is  the  his- 
toric cavalry  seat,  which  has  been  aban- 
doned in  our  army  in  favor  of  the   (for 
military    purposes)    abominable     hunting 
seat 

EFFECT  OF  CERTAIN  SOCIAL  CONDITIONS. 

Just  what  effect  the  suburban  village 
type  of  barracks  has  upon  the  moral 
tone  and  social  life  of  the  army  has 
often  been  set  forth  and  never  flatter- 
ingly,    it  13  never  good  for  a  group  of 


12 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


families  to  be  thrown  together  constant- 
ly, any  more  than  it  is  good  for  single 
men  to  live  In  barracks.  Purely  aca- 
demic communities  suffer  in  the  same 
way  as  military  posts,  yet  they  are 
without  the  endless  dissensions  due  to 
jealousies  arising  out  of  rank,  prece- 
dence, etc.,  and  are  supposed  to  be  ab- 
sorbed in  intellectual  pursuits.  It  would 
be  a  gross  libel  on  the  army  to  accept 
Gen.  Charles  King's  novels  as  a  true  pic- 
ture of  garrison  conditions;  but  if  one- 
fifth  were  true  they  would  be  an  un- 
answerable argument  for  the  simple  sys- 
tem in  vogue  In  England  and  all  the 
Continental  armies  of  letting  army  of- 
ficers live  like  other  folks  and  not  apart 
from  their  own  kind.  It  would  do  them 
infinite  good  to  live  among  the  people 
of  the  United  States,  for  it  would  broaden 
them  and  render  them  less  likely  to  con- 
sider themselves  a  caste,  superior  to  all 
in  civil  life.    There  are  plenty  of  officers 


who  have  sought  detached  service  and 
been  for  years  away  from  their  regiments 
expressly  to  avoid  the  conditions  of  life 
In  posts  like  Missoula,  Benjamin  Harri- 
son, Logan,  etc.,  just  as  there  are  officers 
who  have  served  abroad  who  have  ear- 
nestly urged  the  placing  of  all  our  regi- 
ments in  barracks  in  cities  as  a  step 
towards  efficiency. 

Why  would  it  not  pay  Congress  to  in- 
quire into  all  of  this  before  it  adds  new 
regiments  to  our  army?  Is  it  the  pork- 
barrel  which  prevents?  Or  is  it  the  fail- 
ure of  the  army  leaders  to  point  the 
way?  Or  is  It  both?  The  public  ought 
to  know.  Incidentally,  Congress  ought 
to  inquire  into  the  mischief  done  by  the 
constant  transferring  of  officers  of  the 
fifteen  regiments  on  foreign  service, 
which  makes  regimental  loyalty  and 
esprit  de  corps  Impossible. 

Let  Congress  look  at  the  marines.  This 
branch  of  the  navy  shines  whenever  con- 


trasted with  our  soldiers.  There  are  no 
West  Pointers  among  its  officers  and 
only  a  few  graduates  of  Annapolis  and 
men  from  the  ranks.  The  rest  were 
green  civilians  when  appointed.  Five- 
sixths  of  its  officers  have  entered  the 
marines  since  1898.  It  is  a  service  to 
be  proud  of.  Why?  Is  it  wholly  due  to 
its  connection  with  the  navy,  or  its  con- 
stantly seeing  foreign  service  and  going 
to  sea?  No;  its  admirable  efficiency,  the 
smartness,  the  neatness,  and  excellent 
set-up  of  the  men  and  the  esprit  de  corps 
of  its  officers,  cannot  be  so  easily  ex- 
plained. Some  one  ought  to  tell  us  why, 
some  one  like  a  committee  of  Congress. 
Would  such  a  committee  dwell  on  the 
fact  that  the  Marine  Corps  provides  no 
quarters  at  permanent  posts — save  here 
and  there  one  at  navy  yards — for  the 
families  of  its  officers,  in  addition  to  some 
of  the  other  differences  between  these  two 
fighting  forces? 


LAND  DEFENCES  OF  OUR  COASTS 

Why  Are  They,  Like  the  Navy,  So  Lightly  Ignored  by  the  Militarists  ?- 
Their  Adequacy  Attested  by  Experts — Instance  of  the  Dar- 
danelles— Effectiveness  of  Mine  Fields  Shown  in 
Present  War — Difficulties  of  Invasion 


NEXT  to  the  navy  officers,  who  in  ev- 
ery discussion  of  national  prepar- 
edness are  brushed  aside  with  the 
humiliating  assumption  that  they  will 
inevitably  be  defeated  in  any  and  every 
fleet  action,  it  would  seem  as  if  our 
coast  defences  and  their  officers  were  the 
most  shabbily  treated  by  advocates  of 
greater  national  preparedness.  Thus  I 
heard  the  president  of  the  National  Se- 
curity League  the  other  night  dismiss 
our  costly  and  elaborate  system  of  coast 
defences  with  a  wave  of  his  hand  and  the 
remark: 

"You  know  what  our  coast  defences 
are.  They  may  be  good  where  they  are, 
but  anybody  can  land  and  walk  around 
them." 

His  audience  might  surely  have  been 
pardoned  for  asking  why,  in  that  case, 
the  fortifications  were  built  at  all.  It 
was  plainly  merely  scratching  the  sur- 
face of  the  subject.  But  Mr.  Menken  is 
hardly  an  exception  to  the  rule ;  there  are 
plenty  of  others  who  assume  at  the  be- 
ginning of  their  plea  for  a  greater  army 
that  our  coast  defences  are  no  more  of 
value  than  so  many  match-boxes.  It  is, 
therefore,  worth  while  setting  down  a  few 
little-known  facts  about  them. 

In  the  first  place  since  1888  there  has 
been  expended  upon  the  seacoast  de- 
fences of  the  United  States  proper  no  less 
than  $126,112,068.50.  There  has  been  ap- 
propriated for  all  fortifications  and  re- 
lated purposes  in  the  United  States  and 
its  insular  possessions  since  1888  a  grand 
total  of  $176,973,699.13— rather  a  large 
sum  if  honestly  spent,  and  it  has  been 
honestly  spent,  to  wave  aside  as  not 
worth  considering.  But,  of  course,  large 
sums  of  money  may  be  unwisely  invested 
In  an  Inadequate  plant.  Let  us,  there- 
fore, see  what  the  experts,  to  whom  the 


Security  League  invariably  turns  for 
leadership,  have  to  say  as  to  the  merits  of 
the  seacoast  fortifications. 

SOME  TESTIMONY  ON  THE  SUBJECT. 

Testifying  before  the  Sub-Committee  of 
the  House  Committee  on  Appropriations 
in  charge  of  the  Fortifications  Appropri- 
ation bill  of  1915-1916,  during  February 
of  this  year,  Secretary  of  War  Garrison, 
in  reply  to  a  question  whether  in  a 
broad  sense  our  coast  defences  were  ade- 
quate, replied  as  follows: 

"Yes,  sir;  they  certainly  are  adequate 
for  the  purpose  for  which  they  were 
placed  there,  qualifying  only  to  the  ex- 
tent, that  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  some 
guns  may  not  be  on  naval  ships  that 
can  shoot  more  effectively  at  extreme 
ranges,  but  when  you  come  down  to  that 
you  see  how  small  a  part  that  plays; 
those  ships  could  not  corrfe  in  near  the 
shore;  they  would  have  to  lie  out  there 
and  occasionally  shoot,  perhaps  shoot- 
ing on  the  hit-or-miss  plan;  and  doing 
some  damage  or  doing  no  damage." 

Congressman  Gardner  and  others  hav- 
ing made  much  of  this  fact  that  the  guns 
on  the  new  Queen  Elizabeth  and  other 
super-Dreadnoughts  can  outrange  our 
coast  ordnance,  Secretary  Garrison  was 
asked  what  the  War  Department  was  do- 
ing as  to  this.  He  replied  that  he  was 
asking  for  money  to  alter  the  mounting 
and  elevation  of  the  guns  in  the  existing 
forts  which  would  give  them  approxi- 
mately the  range  of  the  guns  on  these 
new  ships,  and  he  suggested  that  in  any 
new  construction,  guns  equal  or  superior 
to  any  afloat  should  be  installed.  "But," 
he  added,  "there  is  no  occasion  to  rush 
into  that  [the  replacing  of  many  old  guns 
with  new  and  larger  ones],  now,  and  to 
attempt  to  scatter  14  or  16-inch  guns  all 


over  our  continent  would  certainly  result 
In  our  getting  nowhere." 

WHAT   REAL,   SOLDIERS   THINK. 

Now,  Secretary  Garrison  may  be  ob- 
jected to  on  the  ground  that  he  is  a  civili- 
an and  not  a  military  expert.  Fortunately, 
there  were  military  experts  also  in  attend- 
ance upon  this  Committee.  One  of  them 
was  Brigadier-General  Erasmus  M. 
Weaver,  Chief  of  Coast  Artillery,  whose 
duty  it  is,  he  said,  to  "be  advised  as  to 
the  character  and  sufficiency  of  our 
seacoast  armament."  In  reply  to  a 
question.  Gen.  Weaver  said: 

"My  opinion  is  that  our  system  of  for- 
tifications is  reasonably  adequate  for  all 
defensive  purposes  which  they  are  likely 
to  be  called  upon  to  meet."  A  little  later 
he  again  said: 

"I  have  been  a  close  student  of  the 
whole  subject,  naturally,  for  a  number 
of  years,  and  I  know  of  no  fortifications  in 
the  world,  as  far  as  my  reading,  obser- 
vation, and  knowledge  go,  that  compare 
favorably  in  efficiency  with  ours." 

Now,  to  make  coast  defences  valuable 
something  else  is  needed  besides  guns — 
properly  trained  officers  and  men.  As 
to  our  Coast  Artillery  force,  Gen. 
Weaver   said: 

"I  think  it  is  at  least  equal  to  that  of 
any  coast-defence  personnel  in  the 
world." 

In  his  annual  report,  dated  Washing- 
ton, September  19,  1914,  Gen.  Weaver 
had  previously  had  the  following  to  say 
about  the  efficiency  of  his  men:  "The 
work  of  the  personnel  has  been  main- 
tained at  a  high  standard  of  efficiency,  as 
is  evidenced  below  under  the  heading 
'Instruction'  and  'Target  PracUce.'  At- 
tention is  particularly  invited  to  the  effi- 
ciency   of   gun   and   mortar   practice   at 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PREPAREDNESS 


13 


night.  This  is  the  second  year  that  night 
practice  has  been  attempted,  and  it  Is 
encouraging  to  note  that  the  efficiency 
of  both  day  and  night  gun  and  mortar, 
as  well  as  mine,  practice  has  been  fully 
maintained.  The  effort  has  been,  in  both 
practices,  to  assimilate  the  conditions  as 
closely  as  possible  to  those  that  would 
be  met  with  in  war." 

GENERAL  CROZIEIt'S  TESTIMONY. 

The  greatest  expert  in  this  country  on 
fortifications  and  guns.  Gen.  William 
Crozier,  Chief  of  Ordnance,  was  also  called 
by  this  committee.  Being  asked  what, 
in  his  judgment,  would  be  the  condition 
in  our  fortifications  after  the  alterations 
to  which  Secretary  Garrison  referred 
were  made  in  the  mounting  and  eleva- 
tion of  the  existing  guns  in  our  forts. 
Gen.    Crozier   replied: 

"I  am  of  the  opinion,  Mr.  Chairman, 
that  they  [our  fortifications]  will  be  of 
such  power  and  will  be  recognized  of 
such  power  that  naval  officer*  would 
not  put  their  ship*  up  against  them  in 
a  fight.  The  12-inch  guns  that  we  have 
mounted  in  our  fortifications,  after  the 
alterations  to  which  you  have  alluded, 
will  have  with  this  heaviest  projectle  a 
range  of  something  over  17,000  yards, 
and  I  have  not  any  belief  that  naval 
vessels,  even  when  their  guns  will  per- 
mit them  to  fire  at  a  greater  range  than 
that,  would  stand  off  at  a  greater  range 
and  attempt  to  injure  our  fortifications 
by  bombardment,  because  the  chances 
of  their  inflicting  injury  would  be  so 
small  that  they  would  not  consider  the 
waste  of  the  ammunition  to  be  justified. 
Now,  by  another  change,  with  the  use 
of  a  lighter  projectile,  of  700  pounds 
weight,  we  could  still  further  increase 
the  range  by  2,000  yards,  or  running  up 
to  about  19,500  yards  for  this  old  type 
of  12-inch  gun.  You  have  had  some 
testimony  before  you  to  the  effect  that 
the  claim  had  been  made  that  after 
these  changes  these  guns  would  be  just 
as  good  as  the  best  guns  now  being 
mounted  on  foreign  vessels  of  war.  No- 
body that  I  know  of  has  made  any  such 
claim,  and  I  do  not  think  anybody  would 
claim  that  a  modern  12-inch  gun,  no 
matter  what  you  did  with  it,  would  be 
as  good  as  a  modern  15-inch  gun;  but 
in  my  opinion  these  guns,  with  the  other 
advantages  which  land-defence  forti- 
fications have,  will  be  adequate  for  main- 
taining a  successful  combat  with  vessels 
of  war  armed  with  any  gun  which  is 
now  under  construction  anywhere  in  the 
world,  to  my  knowledge." 

It  would  be  hard  to  obtain  a  more  posi- 
tive statement  as  to  what  would  happen 
if  the  Queen  Elizabeth  should  appear  off 
our  coasts  than  this. 

COAST  DEFENCES  STILL  BELIEVED  IN. 
As  has  already  been  pointed  out  in 
a  previous  article,  there  has  been  noth- 
ing in  this  war  to  shake  the  faith  of 
ordnance  officers  in  coast  defences. 
The  German  coast  defences  are  pro- 
tected by  shoal  waters  and  tremendous 
mine  fields;  navigation  there  is  said  to 
be  so  difficult  that  the  most  skilful  pilot 
would  not  dare  take  a  ship  in  when  all 
beacons  and  lighthouses  are  extinguish- 
ed and  all  the  floating  aids  to  naviga- 
tion have  been  removed.  As  a  result 
the    British    fleet    has   delivered    no    at- 


tack whatever  upon  the  island  of  Heli- 
goland or  any  other  point  of  the  land 
defences,  thus  indicating  that  there  are 
other  defences  besides  our  own  that  na- 
val officers  will  not,  as  Gen.  Crozier 
said,  "put  their  ships  up  against  them 
in   a    fight." 

In  the  Dardanelles  we  have  had  the 
Queen  Elizabeth  herself  at  work,  and 
have  witnessed  her  hasty  flight  to  Eng- 
land just  as  soon  as  the  German  sub- 
marines appeared  and  torpedoed  six 
of  the  Allies'  battleships.  American 
correspondents  are  among  those  who 
have  testified  that  the  guns  on  the  Brit- 
ish fleet  did  surprisingly  little  damage 
to  the  coast  defences  of  the  Darda- 
nelles. A  few  guns  were  dismounted, 
but  only  one  or  two  of  the  defences 
were,  it  is  stated,  actually  put  out  of 
business.  It  is  true  that  the  guns  of 
the  ships  made  possible  the  landing  (at 
a  terrible  cost  of  lives)  of  the  Allied 
troops;  but,  once  ashore,  they  have 
made  little  or  no  headway  since,  and, 
what  is  of  greater  importance  In  the 
discussion  of  our  own  defence  prob- 
lem, it  is  widely  believed  that  as  soon 
as  the  inclement  weather  sets  in,  about 
the  1st  of  December,  the  troops  will 
have  to  abandon  their  positions  and 
retreat  to  their  ships,  because  in  the 
absence  of  any  harbor  it  will  probably 
be  impossible  tnen  to  keep  up  communi- 
cation with  the  troops.  If  this  proves 
to  be  the  case,  it  will  be  an  interest- 
ing example  as  to  what  might  happen 
to  the  enemy  that  is  so  blithely  landed 
by  the  advocates  of  military  prepared- 
ness on  the  open  shores  of  Long  Island 
or  Atlantic  City. 

EFFECTIVENESS    OF    MINE    FIELDS. 

But  a  coast  defence  does  not  comprise 
only  men  and  guns.  There  are  other 
means  of  opposing  an  enemy.  Of  these 
the  most  important  is  the  floating  mine, 
which  has  taken  such  tremendous  toll 
of  ships  and  lives  during  the  present 
war,  that  did  such  effective  work  dur- 
ing our  Civil  War  in  the  rivers  of  the 
Confederacy,  a-id,  more  recently,  in  the 
Russo-Japanese  War.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  when  Admiral  Beatty 
was  victoriously  pursuing  the  German 
battle-cruiser  squadron  he  had  to  let 
the  enemy  escape  with  the  loss  of  only 
one  ship,  because  he  found  himself  ap- 
proaching German  mine-fields  and  Ger- 
man submarines.  He  did  not  run  on  a 
mine,  nor  did  a  submarine,  so  far  as 
known,  attack  one  of  his  ships;  none  the 
less,  he  hauled  off  and  started  straight 
back  for  home,  thus  giving  the  best  pos- 
sible evidence  of  the  respect  that  naval 
officers  have  for  two  methods  of  defend- 
ing coasts. 

The  effectiveness  of  an  individual  mine 
has  been  many  times  illustrated  but 
never  better  than  by  the  sinking  of  the 
German  cruiser  Torek,  with  a  loss  of 
three-quarters  of  her  crew  after  striking 
one  of  the  mines  laid  by  Germans  in 
their  own  waters.  In  addition  to  six 
Allied  battleships  submarined  in  the  Dar- 
danelles, two,  the  Ocean  and  the  Irresisti- 
ble, were  sunk  by  floating  mines,  without 
the  enemy's  risking  a  man..  After  this 
all  the  battleships  disappeared. 

Gen.  Weaver  has  testified  that  the 
American  defence  plan  involves  subma- 
rines, especially  in  Puget  Sound  and  San 


Francisco,  in  places  where  the  water  is 
so  deep  that  mines  cannot  be  used.  One 
of  the  greatest  submarine  experts  in  the 
country  writes  me  that  with  200  sub- 
marines properly  distributed  "we  should 
be  secure  from  invasion."  As  long  as 
there  was  a  single  American  submarine 
afloat,  any  invading  fleet  would  have  a 
very  uncomfortable  time  as  it  lay  off  our 
coast  defences  outside  of  the  mine  fields, 
with  all  lights  out,  with  buoys  removed 
and  channels  mined,  and  tried  to  put  the 
fortifications  out  of  business  so  that  a 
landing  could  be  achieved  not  on  the 
open  beach,  but  in  a  sheltered  harbor. 

Much  is  made  by  the  advocates  of 
greater  preparedness  of  the  fact,  official- 
ly confirmed  by  Gen.  Weaver  in  his  tes- 
timony already  referred  to,  that  our  coast 
defences  are  "open  from  behind."  But 
so  are  all  coast  defences  the  world  over; 
so  they  always  have  been  since  the  day 
of  the  round  masonry  fort.  This  war  has 
shown  what  a  simple  method  of  defence 
not  only  for  the  rears  of  coast  defences 
but  for  forts,  exists  in  the  trench  with 
barbed-wire  entanglements.  Gen.  Kitch- 
ener's raw  recruits  have  brought  home 
the  fact  that  they  can  hold  off  the  Ger- 
man veterans  in  such  trenches.  Trenches 
have  indeed  saved  the  great  line  of 
French  forts  from  Verdun  to  Belfort. 
Had  the  German  siege  artillery  been 
able  to  approach  near  enough  to  these 
forts  to  hit  them,  they  would  have  been 
smashed  to  pieces  as  rapidly  as  have 
been  the  Russian  and  Belgian  fortresses 
that  were  deemed  impregnable  and  the 
French  forts  that  have  succumbed. 

AS     TO     SUPPLY     OF     AMMUNITION. 

Finally,  as  to  the  supplies  of  ammuni- 
tion available  for  coast  defences,  it  is 
true  that  Gen.  Crozier,  Gen.  Wotherspoon, 
and  Gen.  Weaver  have  testified  that  we 
have  not  the  amount  of  ammunition  on 
hand  which  those  officers  think  necessary. 
Gen.  Weaver  considers  that  an  allowance 
of  two  hours'  supplies  for  each  coast  gun 
in  the  United  States  is  sufficient,  because 
of  the  possibility  of  transferring  ammuni- 
tion from  one  coast  to  another  and  one 
fort  to  another.  Gen.  Weaver  testified 
that  he  had  a  full  supply  of  ammunition 
on  hand  for  the  10-inch  and  12-lnch 
rifles,  but  less  than  50  per  cent,  in  the 
case  of  the  mortars.  If,  therefore,  the 
advocates  of  preparedness  wish  to  de- 
mand additional  supplies  for  the  larger 
guns  and  more  for  the  mortars,  they  will 
be  on  sure  ground  and  will  have  the 
hearty  cooperation  of  these  experts,  par- 
ticularly as  the  progress  of  events  in 
Europe  shows  that  far  greater  quanti- 
ties of  ammunition  can  be  shot  away  in 
battle  than  any  one  had  heretofore 
Imagined. 

Here  again  the  question  of  policy 
comes  up.  If  it  is  decided  that  we  shall 
pursue  the  plan  of  defensive  operations 
only,  we  can  well  afford,  if  we  must  have 
defences,  to  strengthen  our  coast  defences, 
lay  in  all  the  mines  we  can  possibly  use, 
submarines  in  plenty,  and  dirigible  torpe- 
does according  to  the  plans  of  young 
Mr.  Hammond,  and  any  other  devices 
that  the  Naval  Inventions  Board  may 
work  out.  With  a  clear  goal  and  defi- 
nite problems  assigned  to  it,  the  country 
should,  with  the  cooperation  of  both  ser- 
vices, be  able  to  accomplish  so  much  as 
to  make  it  impossible  for  a  foreign  na- 


14 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


tion  to  consider  the  question  of  Invasion 
and  at  the  same  time  save  ourselves  from 
the  cost  of  a  huge  fleet  and  army. 

THE  QUESTION  OP  AN  OVERSEAS  RAID. 

As  for  this  question  of  Invasion,  about 
which  such  utter  nonsense  has  been 
written,  still  one  more  word  Is  In  place. 
Representative  Williams,  of  Illinois,  has 
estimated  that  it  will  require  1,000  trans- 
ports, each  conveying  1,000  men,  with 
provisions,  munitions,  and  arms  and 
equipment,  convoyed  by  100  battleships, 
if  Japan  should  seriously  make  an  at- 
tempt upon  our  shores.  Thirty-one  trans- 
ports and  sixty-two  war  vessels  were 
necessary  to  take  the  Canadian  expedi- 
tion of  33,000  troops  to  England  at  the 
beginning  of  1915,  and  the  28,000  troops 
from  Australia  required  forty  ships.  Ger- 
many could  not  do  better.  It  is  well 
worth  while  to  quote  in  this  connection 
what  Representative  Witherspoon,  of 
Mississippi,  said  January  29  last  on  the 
Naval  Appropriation  bill  about  Germany's 
twenty   pre-Dreadnought   battleships: 

But  what  I  want  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  especially  about  these  ships  is  that 
they  ought  not  to  be  considered  by  us  at 
all,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  an  impossi- 
bility for  them  to  cross  the  ocean.  They 
cannot  carry  coal  enough  to  bring  them 
across  the  ocean,  not  one  of  them.  The 
maximum  coal  capacity  of  the  first  five 
of  those  German  battleships  is  1,050  tons. 
The  maximum  coal  capacity  of  the  next 
five  is  1,400  tons.  The  maximum  coal 
capacity  of  the  next  five  is  1,600  tons, 
and  of  the  other  five  is  1,800  tons  of  coal. 
You  cannot  get  those  ships  across  the 
ocean  with  that  much  coal.  They  can 
not  carry  enough  coal  to  bring  them,  the 
largest  of  them,  closer  than  within  500 
miles  of  our  shores,  and  I  do  not  believe 
the  smallest  of  them  could  get  half-way 
across  the  ocean. 


Even  more  striking  is  a  statement  in 
the  brilliant  book  by  a  dissenting  Ger- 
man, "I  Accuse,"  in  which  he  bitterly 
criticises  his  own  Government  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end.  Speaking  of  a  pos- 
sible expedition  from  Germany  to  Great 
Britain,  he  says:  "Notwithstanding  all 
the  admiration  we  may  feel  for  the 
achievements  of  our  heroic  navy,  it 
would  be  foolish  to  close  our  eyes  to  the 
fact  that  the  gigantic  superiority  of  the 
English  fleet  cannot  be  equalized  by 
means  of  Zeppelins  and  submarines — of 
which  latter,  be  it  observed,  England 
possesses  a  greater  number  than  we  do 
[in  1912  eighty-five,  to  which  must  be 
added  ninety  French].  And  in  all  this 
we  have  to  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that 
the  English  fleet  would  be  the  assailant; 
the  German  fleet  would  be  the  fleet  as- 
sailed, in  so  far  as  it  managed  to  press 
forward  to  the  Channel.  The  German 
fleet  would,  however,  have  to  protect 
not  only  itself,  but  also  clumsy  cargo 
boats,  incapable  of  self-defence,  on  which 
there  would  have  to  be  transported  to 
England  a  number  of  army  corps,  with 
the  appropriate  light  and  heavy  artillery, 
cavalry,  trains,  pioneer  troops,  automo- 
biles, and  aircraft  material.  Is  such  an 
attempt  at  all  conceivable?  Is  it  pos- 
sible that  there  are  human  beings  who 
are  prepared  to  expose  to  destruction  at 
a  blow  on  such  a  scale  as  this  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  their  fellowmen?" 

WHOLE  EXPEDITION   IN   PERIL. 

This  mere  statement  of  the  problem 
would  seem  to  show  its  impracticability. 

As  far  back  as  February,  1909,  a  com- 
petent writer  in  the  Contemporary  Re- 
view  pointed   out   that   any    fleet  which 


could  bring  German  troops  to  England 
could  move  only  at  a  speed  of  six  or 
seven  knots  an  hour,  the  speed  of  the 
slowest  vessel,  and  that  these  slow-going 
merchant  ships,  "crowded  with  men, 
would  form  an  easy  target  for  torpedo 
craft  or  mine  layers,  even  in  small  force, 
and  the  sinking  of  a  few  would  prob- 
ably cause  panic  among  the  remainder." 

The  same  writer  pointed  out  that  If 
150,000  Germans  were  to  be  transported 
on  200,000  tons  of  shipping  it  would  have 
to  be  "a  force  destitute  of  artillery,  cav- 
alry, and  land  transport,"  He  also  proved 
that  200,000  tons  of  shipping  cannot  be 
found  lying  in  German  ports  at  any  one 
time,  and  that  to  gather  them  together 
would  take  days  and  probably  weeks,  and 
give  due  notice  of  their  intention  of  mov- 
ing. That  it  would  take  such  an  armada 
about  three  weeks  to  cross  the  Atlantic 
has  recently  been  pointed  out  by  Mr. 
Jonathan  A.  Rawson,  jr.,  and  this  allows 
for  fair  weather  and  smooth  seas  all  the 
way. 

While  it  is  true  that  the  United  States 
has  not  the  overwhelming  superiority  of 
the  English  fleet,  that  does  not  alter  the 
fact  that  an  expedition  to  the  United 
States,  a  distance  of  4,000  miles  from 
Bremen  and  Hamburg — and  the  Germans 
have  no  nearer  base  from  which  to  oper- 
ate— would  be  an  undertaking  so  vastly 
more  difficult  than  an  invasion  of  Eng- 
land, that  not  even  the  Germans  would 
contemplate  it 

Surely  there  is  nothing  in  the  condi- 
tion of  our  coast  defences  or  in  this  prob- 
lem of  overseas  invasion  to  make  us  give 
in  to  the  sudden  fears  of  the  militarists! 


SHALL  WE  PAY  THE  MILITIA? 

Militia  Pay  Bill  a  Sop  to  the  National  Guard — Arguments  Against  the 
Proposal — Enormous  Expense  Certain  to  Grow,  Even  if  the  Be- 
ginning Were  Moderate — Administration  Preparedness 
Plan  a  Reversal  of  Historic  American  Policy 


THE  Administration  plan  for  the  en- 
largement of  the  regular  army  by 
the  enlistment  of  a  special  reserve 
force  in  addition  to  the  State  militia  is  a 
radical  departure  in  our  history — first, 
because  no  such  reserve  has  ever  been 
undertaken  before  and,  secondly,  because 
it  means  the  final  abandonment  of  the 
plan  to  make  of  the  existing  National 
Guard  a  first-line  reserve  in  time  of  war. 
As  such  It  has  served  in  several  of  our 
wars,  more  or  less — generally  less — suc- 
cessfully. But  legal  experts  in  the  War 
Department  and  others  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  cannot  go  any  further 
in  the  Federalizing  of  the  militia  than  it 
has  now  gone,  without  coming  into  vio- 
lent contact  with  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  Hence  the  abandonment  of 
the  militia  as  a  first  reserve  and  the  com- 
ing transfer  of  the  affections  and  inter- 
est of  the  War  Department  to  the  new 
Federal  reserve,  provided  that  Congress 
shall  sanction  it. 
That  this  will  cause  heart-burnings  in 


the  militia  is  obvious.  That  body  has  felt 
hurt  because  it  was  unofficially  noised 
about  that  graduates  of  the  publicity- 
achieving  civilian  camps  of  the  past  sum- 
mer were  to  be  regarded  as  In  line  for 
commissions  as  regular  officers  in  war 
time.  Militiamen,  especially  officers,  who 
serve  faithfully,  put  in  much  more  time 
soldiering  in  one  year  than  do  those  who 
spend  a  month  at  such  a  training  camp. 
The  drill  is  more  trying  and  monotonous, 
and  there  is  no  glare  of  the  lime-light 
about  it 

Now,  if  it  becomes  known  that  the  War 
Department  will  hereafter  be  only  second- 
arily interested  in  the  State  troops,  there 
is  bound  to  be  further  disappointment 
which  cannot  have  a  favorable  effect 
upon  enlistments,  particularly  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  the  new  Federal  Reserve 
will  not  have  to  drill  throughout  the  win- 
ter, or  to  be  in  readiness  for  strike  or 
riot  duty,  but  will  drill  in  summer  time 
in  the  open.  To  offset  this  discourage- 
ment the  War  Department  again  holds 


out  the  Militia  Fay  bill,  this  time  as  a 
sop,  whereas  heretofore  It  has  been  her- 
alded as  the  one  necessary  step  to  make 
the  National  Guard  the  complete  and  ef- 
ficient organization  It  ought  to  be. 

WHAT    THE    PAY    BILL    OFFERS. 

This  pay  bill  is  now  a  familiar  one  on 
the  calendars  of  Congress,  but  not  until 
last  winter  did  it  receive  the  sanction  of 
the  President,  the  War  Department,  and 
of  the  chairman  of  the  House  Military 
Affairs  Committee,  Congressman  Hay,  in 
addition  to  the  National  Militia  Board,  the 
National  Guard  Association,  etc.,  or  pass 
the  House.  Its  object  is  simply  to  pay  of- 
ficers and  men  of  the  militia  for  all  their 
drills  in  winter  time;  that  is  for  service 
which,  since  the  foundation  of  the  re- 
public, has  been  performed  without  re- 
muneration as  a  patriotic  free-will  offer- 
ing to  the  States  and  to  the  Union.  The 
reason  given  for  it  is  the  assertion  that 
greater  efficiency  and  a  better  grade  of 
militiamen  can  be  secured  by  paying  for 
the  winter  drills;  that  it  costs  men  money 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PREPAREDNESS 


15 


to  belong:  now:  that  many  cannot,  there- 
fore, afford  to,  and  that  more  serious  and 
valuable  recruits  could  be  obtained  if  the 
militia  could  offer  50  cents  a  drill,  or  $2 
a  month,  as  compensation. 

It  Is  estimated  that  this  bill  will  cost 
all  the  way  from  $8,000,000  to  $15,000,000 
a  year.  The  more  effective  it  might  be, 
that  is,  the  more  it  brought  men  Into  the 
ranks— if  any— the  higher  would  be  the 
cost  It  has  been  eagerly  seized  upon  by 
certain  State  authorities  whose  slogan 
is:   "Let  Uncle  Sam  support  the  militia." 

The  proposal  that  if  the  militia  is  to  be 
paid  at  all,  it  should  be  paid  by  the  sev- 
eral States  whose  creation  It  is,  evokes  no 
enthusiasm  whatever  In  the  various  State 
capitals.  Hence  the  powerful  militia  lobby 
which  has  been  working  for  the  bill  has 
wasted  no  time  at  home,  but  gone  straight 
to  Washington. 

Even  there,  however.  It  has  run  upon 
some  serious  rocks.  There  are  constitu- 
tional lawyers  In  plenty  to  point  out  that 
there  Is  no  provision  in  the  Constitution 
which  confers  upon  Congress  the  right  to 
"support"  or  "maintain"  the  militia,  and 
that  the  bill  as  drawn  would  make  it  pos- 
sible for  the  President  to  strip  a  State  of 
all  its  troops,  leaving  it  powerless  to  sup- 
press violence  within  its  own  borders  or 
to  enforce  Its  laws.  If  he  thinks  occasion 
warrants  his  sending  the  entire  militia 
elsewhere.  In  our  recent  border  troubles, 
for  Instance,  had  this  proposed  law  been 
In  force,  the  President  might  have  sent 
the  entire  New  York  mllltla  to  the  Rio 
Grande  on  the  ground  of  the  "grave  emer- 
gency" existing  there,  leaving  the  State 
bare  of  troops. 

ARGUMENTS  AGAINST  THE  PROPOSAL. 

The  arguments  against  the  bill — argu- 
ments advanced  not  merely  by  captious 
civilian  critics,  but  by  some  National 
Guard  officers  like  Col.  W.  G.  Bates,  of 
the  Seventy-first  New  York,  and  regular 
officers,  and  by  others  who  have  studied 
the  question,  among  them  a  minority  of 
the  House  Committee  on  Military  Affairs 
— may  be  summarized  as  follows: 

(1.)  There  Is  no  guarantee  whatever 
that  the  payments  authorized  will  ac- 
complish the  desired  end  of  increasing 
the  efficiency  of  the  militia. 

(2.)  The  bill  will  create  a  new  class  of 
public  servants  to  be  paid  out  of  the 
Federal  Treasury  for  all  time. 

(3.)  It  will  create  another  powerful 
military  machine  well  organized,  as  its 
lobby  shows,  to  bring  pressure  to  bear 
upon  Congress  for  further  increases. 

(4.)  It  Is  special  legislation  urged  by 
men  who  will  profit  financially  by  its 
passage. 

(5.)  No  reliable  forecast  whatever  can 
be  made  of  Its  cost,  as  Is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  the  estimates  vary  by  $7,000,- 
000;  that  Is,  they  run  from  $8,000,000  to 
$15,000,000  a  year.  One  Congressman  be- 
lieves that  it  will  go  to  $100,000,000  in  a 
few  years. 

(6.)  It  makes  possible  a  grave  conflict 
of  authority  between  a  State  and  the 
Federal  Government,  and  is  a  further 
blow  at  States'  Rights. 

(7.)  The  constitutionality  of  such  a 
measure  is  more  than  dubious. 

As  to  the  first  of  these  points,  pay  for 
the  voluntary  service  now  performed 
could  only  give  us  a  better  militia  if  the 
sole   evil  were  non-attendance   at  drills 


and  the  money  paid  were  sufficient  to 
lure  the  men  In  the  ranks  to  the  armories 
on  drill  nights.  Nor  would  It  be  a  cure- 
all  If  the  trouble  were  the  quality  of 
the  men  now  enlisted.  No  pay  of  fifty 
cents  or  a  dollar  a  night  could  tempt  the 
men  who  compose  the  best-drilled  and 
most  efficient  regiments  such  as  the  Sev- 
enth Regiment,  Squadron  A,  the  Twenty- 
third  Regiment,  and  the  crack  regiments 
everywhere.  As  for  the  others — and  the 
writer  served  in  the  ranks  of  an  unfash- 
ionable regiment — they  contain  a  good 
cross-section  of  the  working  classes  of  a 
city,  very  much  the  same  kind  of  men 
who  turn  out  in  case  of  hostilities. 

SUM  MUST  BE  MUCH  LARGER. 

Undoubtedly  they  would  be  glad  to 
have  the  United  States  give  them  real 
money  for  services  they  now  render  free- 
ly, but  to  most  of  them  the  sum  would 
have  to  be  far  larger  than  Is  contem- 
plated In  order  to  induce  them  to  enlist 
If  there  were  no  other  motive.  If  there 
are  some  regiments  In  which  the  mate- 
rial Is  Inferior,  then  the  fault  is  largely 
with  the  officers;  poor  officers  attract 
poor  recruits,  and  make  poor  regiments. 
Well-officered  and  well-disciplined  regi- 
ments, in  which  there  Is  a  good  soldierly 
spirit,  naturally  draw  recruits  to  them. 
There  is  the  gravest  doubt,  moreover, 
whether  the  kind  of  men  who  would  be 
lured  Into  the  service  of  the  State  by  a 
bait  of  $2  a  month,  would  be  really  worth 
having,  as  good,  for  Instance,  as  the 
present  material. 

But  If  the  whole  trouble  is  with  the 
officers,  can  better  men  be  lured  into  the 
service  by  20  per  cent,  per  annum  of  the 
regular  officer's  pay?  It  Is  again  doubt- 
ful, because  in  most  States,  officers  are 
elected  by  the  votes  of  the  soldiers,  who 
are  all  too  apt  to  choose  "good  fellows," 
but  weak  disciplinarians,  men  rather  of 
their  own  kind  with  whom  they  can  be 
on  terms  of  intimacy.  So  long  as  this 
system  continues  Its  evil  workings  will 
merely  be  Intensified  by  the  desire  of  of- 
ficers in  need  of  money,  or  pecuniarily 
ambitious,  to  intrigue  with  the  men  in 
order  that  they  may  succeed  to  the  high- 
er salaries  of  their  captains  or  majors. 
The  advocates  of  the  bill  Ignore  this 
point,  but  insist  that  regular  pay  will 
retain  in  the  service  "capable  officers, 
many  of  whom  might  otherwise  be  com- 
pelled to  resign,"  and  enable  "officers  of 
moderate  means  to  devote  the  time 
necessary  to  military  duties  and  studies." 
It  Is  my  observation  that  the  bulk  of 
the  capable  officers  who  resign  do  so  be- 
cause of  pressure  of  business,  that  is,  be- 
cause of  prosperity.  Few  officers  of  mod- 
erate means  try  to  eke  out  their  salaries 
by  night  work;  hence,  the  drills  do  not 
Interfere  with  securing  of  men  of  this 
class,  and  the  pecuniary  burden  for  uni- 
forms, etc.,  Is  far  less  severe  than  Is  the 
demand  for  the  time  of  an  officer. 

In  our  New  York  Guard  troop,  battery 
and  company  commanders,  and  some 
staff  officers  spend  from  three  to  five 
nights  a  week  throughout  the  season  at 
their  armories.  After  a  while  the  strain 
becomes  too  great  or  the  officer's  home 
life  demands  more  attention.  Not  In  one 
case  In  a  hundred  Is  the  resignation  due 
to  Inability  to  earn  enough  above  one's 
living  expenses  to  pay  for  the  extra  ex- 
pense one  is  put  to.  It  Is  the  time  de- 
manded  of   the    studious   and   ambitious 


officer  that  Is  the  real  stumbling  block, 
and  If  officers  of  leisure  can  be  found 
they  are  usually  in  no  need  whatever  of 
25  per  cent,  of  a  regular  lieutenant's  pay. 

A   LESSON  FROM   PENSION    INCREASE. 

As  for  the  question  of  cost  and  the 
creation  of  a  new  political  military  ma- 
chine, the  former  Adlutant-General  of 
New  York  State,  William  "Verbeck,  In  a 
twenty-six  page  pamphlet  issued  by  him 
when  in  office,  asked  the  question:  "Will 
the  National  Guard,  if  the  bill  Is  passed, 
demand  additional  compensation?"  He 
answered  It  thus:  "This  bill  provides  rea- 
sonable compensation  and  it  is  not  fair 
to  presume  that  the  National  Guard  will 
undertake  to  make  any  unreasonable  de- 
mands. By  so  doing,  they  would  only 
Injure  the  good  reputation  which  they 
have  already  obtained.  Unreasonable  de- 
mands would  be  met  by  a  Just  rebuke 
from  Congress." 

This  was  just  what  the  country  heard 
in  the  early  days  of  the  pensions  after 
the  Civil  War.  Did  anybody  say  that 
the  veterans  of  the  Grand  Army  wished 
a  pension  for  everybody?  How  scanda- 
lous to  Insinuate  It,  or  to  say  that  In  a 
few  years  Government  pap  would  be 
asked  for  skulkers,  cowards,  and  camp- 
followers,  or  that  more  than  a  few  mil- 
lions would  be!  Yet  we  know  what  has 
happened  In  the  last  fifty  years. 

The  minority  of  the  House  Military 
Affairs  Committee  on  December  10,  1912, 
thus  expressed  Itself  as  to  the  dangers 
that  lurk  behind  this  legislation: 

The  minority  making  this  report  Is  con- 
vinced that  the  legislation  proposed  by 
the  pending  bill  is  not  only  unwise,  but 
that  it  Is  dangerous  in  the  extreme. 
Rather  than  enter  upon  a  legislative 
course  that  will  Inevitably  entail  upon  the 
general  Government  an  enormous  ex- 
pense, which  may  be  found  in  dire  emer- 
gency to  hay^  been  wasted,  a  course  that 
will  surely  lead  to  the  creation  of  a  great 
mllltarv  force  that  will  become  so  power- 
ful politically  that  Congress  will  be  no 
more  able  to  resist  Its  demands  than  It 
has  been  to  resist  the  demands  of  the 
far  less  compactly  organized  and  man- 
ageable army  of  pension  applicants  and 
their  friends,  this  minority  would  favor  a 
reasonable  increase  of  the  regular  army, 
leaving  the  States  to  maintain  their  own 
troops  In  their  own  way,  and  at  their 
own  expense,  without  any  aid  whatever 
from  the  United  States.  ^Objectionable 
as  such  an  increase  of  the  regular  army 
would  be.  It  would  have  the  merit  of 
assuring  us  the  possession  of  an  armed 
force  that  in  time  of  war  would,  by  Ms 
persistent  training,  be  worth  all  of  Its 
cost,  which  undoubtedly  would  be  cheap- 
er In  the  end  than  the  cost  of  the  gTeat 
semi -military.  Reml-clvll  organization, 
wielding  tremendous  political  power,  that 
will  grow  up  as  surely  as  the  sun  will 
rise  and  set  If  the  course  of  legislation 
outlined  by  the  pending  bill  Is  once  en- 
tered upon. 

CERTAINTY  OF  PROGRESSIVE  DEMANDS. 

Congressman  Fitzgerald,  of  New  York, 
Chairman  of  the  Appropriations  Commit- 
tee In  the  last  House.  In  speaking  against 
the  bill  In  Congress,  after  pointing  out 
that  the  Federal  Government  Is  already 
paying  out  $4,000,000  annually  for  the 
equipment  of  the  mllltla,  said:  "When 
men  are  put  upon  a  basis  where  they  re- 
ceive 25  per  cent,  of  the  pay  of  an  en- 
listed man,  they  will  very  quickly  demand 
the  compensation  be  increased  to  50,  to 
75,  and  then  to  100  per  cent,  of  the  pay 
of  an  enlisted  man;  and  then,  with  this 
organized  movement  extending  Into  every 
little  hamlet  throughout  the  country  will 


16 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


come  an  irresistible  demand  that  the  pay 
of  the  enlisted  men  of  the  army  be  in- 
creased so  that  the  militia  may  be  the 
beneficiaries,  and  instead  of  imposing  an 
annual  charge  of  six  or  eight  million  dol- 
lars, as  some  well-informed  persons  pre- 
dict, it  will  very  easily  result  in  a  fixed 
charge  of  over  thirty  million  a  year 
.  .  .  but  now  it  is  proposed  that  we 
change  our  policy,  and,  instead  of  rely- 
ing upon   patriotic  motives  that  we  rely 


upon  selfishness  and  greed,  and  entirely 
upon  a  financial  Inducement  for  men  to 
undertake  service  In  the  militia." 

What  the  militia  needs,  if  it  is  to  be 
developed,  Is  not  pay,  but  popular  en- 
couragement, further  advances  along  the 
lines  of  the  last  few  years,  during  which 
it  has  made  very  great  strides,  notably 
la  the  East;  the  abolition  of  the  election 
of  officers;  the  freeing  of  its  business 
methods  from  much  of  the  regular  army 


red  tape,  which  often  causes  waste,  and 
above  all,  its  removal  from  the  sphere  of 
politics.  It  Is  politics  and  the  lack  of  real 
military  standards  that  have  been  the  bane 
of  the  militia  service.  Of  course,  it  is  true 
that  it  needs  greater  efficiency,  but  it  is 
getting  this  in  a  remarkable  degree  In 
these  days — and  wholly  without  the  Mili- 
tia Pay  bill. 


WHY  CIVILIAN  CONTROL  OF  THE  NAVY? 

Inherent  in  Our  Theory  of  Government  that  Professional  Soldiers  and 

Sailors  Shall  Be  Under  Civil  Authority — Blunders  and  Pride  of 

Expert  Opinion  in  the  Navy's  Past — Civilians  Should 

Control  Both  Purse-Strings  and  Military  Policy 


WHY  does  the  Navy  need  civilian 
control  ?  Why  should  we  not  turn 
over  the  Navy  Department,  the 
navy  itself,  and  everything  relating 
to  the  service  afloat  to  naval  officers, 
making  some  Rear-Admiral  the  Secretary 
of  the  Navy,  with  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet? 
They  do  it  in  Prance  and  Germany  and 
elsewhere.  Why  not  turn  over  the  whole 
business  of  the  navy  to  the  experts? 

Primarily  because  it  is  contrary  to  the 
accepted  Anglo-Saxon  tradition,  which 
has  ever  guarded  most  jealously  the  su- 
premacy of  civilian  authority  over  the 
military.  Our  forefathers  had  been  dom- 
inated by  the  military  throughout  their 
Colonial  days;  they  were  in  no  mood  to 
exalt  it  after  they  had  achieved  their  in- 
dependence. They  saw  that  even  in  the 
mother-country  the  control  of  the  navy 
and  army  was  kept  in  civilian  hands,  and 
they  stuck  to  the  principle  not  only  in 
the  administration  of  the  Government, 
but  In  the  safeguarding  of  the  rights  of 
the  civilian  individual  from  any  interfer- 
ence by  courts-martial — an  echo  of  which 
we  have  just  had  in  this  State  in  the 
debate  over  the  proposed  Constitution.  It 
is  true  that  Washington  appointed  his  old 
Chief  of  Artillery,  Henry  Knox,  as  the 
first  Secretary  of  War,  and  it  is  a  fact 
also  that  there  is  no  law  prohibiting  the 
appointment  as  Secretary  of  War  of  a 
General  on  the  active  list  or  an  active 
Admiral  as  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 
Generals  Sherman  and  Schofield  were  two 
generals  who  acted  as  Secretary  of  War 
for  considerable  periods  while  also  on  the 
army's  active  list.  Former  officers  in 
number  have  served  as  Secretary  of  War; 
fewer  as  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  But 
the  principle  that  there  should  be  com- 
plete civilian  control  has  none  the  less 
been  upheld  by  public  sentiment  and  by 
tradition. 

Indeed,  President  Wilson  well  stated 
the  reason  for  it  in  his  speech  In  New 
York  on  May  17,  In  which  he- defined  the 
sphere  of  activity  of  our  naval  officers 
thus: 

"The  mission  of  America  is  the  only 
thing  that  a  sailor  or  a  soldier  should 
think  about.  He  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  formulation  of  her  policy.  He  is  to 
support  her  policy,  whatever  it  is,  but 
he  is  to  support  her  policy  in  the  spirit 


of  herself.  And  the  strength  of  our 
policy  is  that  we,  who  for  the  time  being 
administer  the  affairs  of  this  nation,  do 
not  originate  her  spirit  We  attempt  to 
embody  it.  We  attempt  to  realize  it  In 
action.  We  are  dominated  by  it  We  do 
not  dictate  It" 

The  reason  for  this  Is  that  the  expert 
however  patriotic  and  highminded,  can- 
not but  look  at  things  from  a  rather  nar- 
row and  partisan  professional  point  of 
view.  When  one  thinks  of  the  courtly 
and  gentle  Dewey,  of  Farragut,  of  C.  R. 
P.  Rodgers,  and  a  host  of  other  naval 
celebrities,  to  say  nothing  of  the  leaders 
of  our  present  generation  of  naval  offi- 
cers, it  Is  Impossible  to  conjure  up  an 
American  von  Tirpitz,  and  yet  it  is  true 
that  there  have  been  some  men  in  high 
positions  who  seemed  bent  on  subordinat- 
ing everything  to  their  own  and  the 
navy's  aggrandizement  But  even  if  this 
is  exceptional,  it  is  difficult  for  the  men 
at  the  top  in  either  the  army  or  the 
navy  to  view  things  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  country  as  a  whole.  They  have 
long  been  detached  from  civilian  life,  with 
the  business  side  of  which  they  may 
never  have  come  into  contact.  Theirs 
is  not  the  responsibility  for  raising  funds, 
that  is,  for  providing  the  ways  and  means 
for  purchasing  the  armaments  they  de- 
sire. Their  entire  training  leads  them, 
moreover,  to  fear  the  oncoming  of  an 
enemy,  and  they  habitually  think  of  ev- 
ery possible  combination  that  may  be 
brought  against  them. 

THE  SOLDIER  IS  ALWAYS   FEARFUL. 

Hence,  as  already  pointed  out  in  these 
articles,  no  naval  or  military  officer  is 
ever  satisfied  with  the  forces  at  his  dis- 
posal— at  least,  there  is  no  record  of  such 
a  one.  The  German  General  Staff  was 
not — even  after  their  levy  upon  the  peo- 
ple of  Germany  in  1913,  when  they  took 
a  portion,  not  of  the  citizen's  income,  but 
of  his  property,  in  order  to  defend  Ger- 
many against  its  menacing  foes.  No 
French  or  British  general  ever  had 
enough  men,  and  so  it  goes.  Now,  we 
are  as  a  nation  very  certain,  from  the 
President  down,  that  none  of  our  officers 
of  the  army  or  navy  will  ever  get  into 
(liia  frame  of  mind.  Do  we  not  all  of 
us  know  Smith,  Brown,  and  Jones,  of  the 
navy,  and  Robinson,  Allen,  and  Tucker, 


of  the  army?  Are  they  not  peace-loving? 
Is  there  anything  of  the  militarist  about 
them?  Well,  the  answer  is  that  there 
is  not  Individually,  but  that  they  are 
parts  of  a  system  and  a  machine  which 
inevitably  make  for  the  subordination  of 
everything  civilian  to  the  military.  What 
ether  lessons  can  be  drawn  from  the 
present  experience  of  the  world? 

Is  it  not  true  that  there  have  been 
French  militarists,  from  the  Louis  down, 
as  menacing  to  the  world's  peace  as  any 
made  in  Germany?  True,  under  the  Re- 
public they  have  been  held  in  check,  but 
the  Republic  produced  a  Boulanger,  and 
the  Dreyfus  trial,  with  its  sickening 
revelations,  also  took  place  under  it. 
Have  we  not  even  seen  signs  in  one  of 
the  youngest  of  the  great  nations  of  the 
world,  Japan,  that  its  internal  order  was 
threatened  by  militaristic  influences?  Did 
not  a  Cabinet  fall  on  the  question  of  a 
naval  increase  or  the  refusal  thereof? 
Were  there  not  shocking  stories  of  naval 
corruption  from  there  a  year  ago,  which 
proved  to  have  been  linked  up  with  cor- 
ruption in  Berlin  by  agents  of  the 
German  armament  firms?  "Since  the 
war  with  China  in  1894  brought  in  an 
era  of  huge  contracts  for  supplies,"  says 
Robert  Young,  editor  of  the  Japan  Chron- 
icle, "corruption  in  places  high  and  low, 
in  the  army  as  well  as  the  navy,  has 
been  a  constant  theme  of  the  Japanese 
newspapers.  .  .  .  But  the  most  fertile 
source  of  demoralization  has  been  the 
temptation  offered  by  huge  contracts  for 
armament  material  and  the  competition 
of  rival  firms."  Rear-Admiral  Fujii  was 
arrested  in  1914  for  taking  bribes  ag- 
gregating $176,350. 

Have  we  not  got  our  own  Navy  League, 
headed  by  a  former  navy  officer,  which 
has  just  solemnly  declared  as  its  pro- 
gramme that  we  shall  have  not  only  the 
largest  navy  in  the  world,  but  one  com- 
petent to  meet  and  overcome  the  fleets 
of  any  three  Powers  that  may  be  brought 
against  us — say,  Germany,  Kngland,  and 
France?  This  is  surely  out-Bernhardiing 
Bernhardt!  Yet  this  is  solemnly  urged  by 
a  rich  and  prosperous  body  of  Ameri- 
can citizens.  If  their  policy  were  carried 
out,  and  there  were  a  similar  annual  ex- 
pansion of  our  ljind  forces,  is  it  too  much 
to  say  that  the  business  of  preparing  for 


THE    QUESTION   OF   PREPAREDNESS 


17 


war  would  take  precedence  over  every 
other  department  of  Government,  whether 
conce  ned  with  education,  or  the  devel- 
opment or  conservation  of  resources,  of 
water  powers  and  waste  lands,  etc.,  etc.? 
Were  that  policy  to  be  accepted  by  the 
American  people,  this  country  would  be- 
come as  much  dreaded  for  its  navallsm 
as  England  has  been,  and  it  would  be  a 
standing-  menace  to  the  peace  of  the 
world,  however  certain  President  Wilson 
and  others  may  be  that  this  country  at 
this  day  and  hour  is  not  contemplating 
aggression,  and  never  could  think  of  ag- 
gression. 

PERIL    IS    IN    THE    SYSTEM. 

No,  it  is  not  the  Individual  In  the  mil- 
itary and  naval  system  that  Is  to  be 
inveighed  against,  but  the  system  itself 
in  which  the  Individual  is  but  a 
cog.  The  individual  is  swept  along 
by  the  tide;  he  cannot  help  him- 
self, and  that  tendency  is  best  checked 
under  free  Governments  by  civilian  con- 
trol. More  than  that,  is  it  not  true,  that 
in  every  walk  of  life  the  expert  must 
needs  be  controlled,  lest  his  absorption 
in  his  specialty  make  him  subordi- 
nate everything  to  the  development  of 
that  specialty?  We  have  seen  some  cu- 
rious evidences  of  this  in  the  medical 
profession.  Have  we  not  had  plenty  of 
signs  right  here  in  New  York  city  of 
the  trend  of  certain  medical  men  to- 
wards assuming  autocratic  control  of  the 
public?  Do  they  not  desire  to  vaccinate 
us  by  law,  not  once,  but  a  number  of 
times  at  once;  do  they  not  wish  to  pass 
laws  demanding  a  rigid  physical  inspec- 
tion of  every  individual  at  least  once  a 
year?  Do  we  not  find  a  conservatism  as 
hostile  to  any  departure  from  the  old 
traditions  as  any  one  could  find  in  the 
army  or  navy?  Do  we  not  find  insanity 
experts  who  think  that  every  Individual 
varies  mentally  from  the  normal,  and 
experts  in  other  sad  diseases  who  insist 
that  60  to  70  per  cent,  of  the  entire  world 
is  affected  by  them?  Do  we  not  find 
lawyers  in  plenty  who  look  upon  every 
problem  that  is  presented  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  courts  and  the  machinery 
of  the  law?  The  tendency  of  the  expert 
to  become  absolutely  absorbed  In  his  sub- 
ject is  surely  too  obvious  to  need  dwell- 
ing upon,  and  particularly  when  authori- 
ties confer  upon  him  complete  power, 
do  we  got  excesses  which  serve  to  alarm 
the  public. 

But  there  is  still  another  and   a  very 
particular  reason  why  the  control  of  the 
navy  and  army  should  not  be  completely 
handed  over  to  experts.  It  is  that  the  pub- 
lic does   not  get   the   best   results   when 
the  experts  are  solely  in  charge.       As  to 
that,    there    could    be    nothing    more    il- 
luminating than  the  history  of  the  Unit- 
ed States  navy  itself,  in  which  is  to  be 
found  instance  after  Instance  where  pro- 
fe   sional  conservatism  and   the  pride  of 
lion  of  experts  have  combined  to  keep 
service  in  a  narrow  rut  and  routine, 
,    therefore,    prevented    the    adoption 
•     ;  development  of  new  types  of  vessels 
engines  of  war.     It  is  easy  to  pick 
out  a  few  historical  instances. 

:ASE    OF   THE   FIRST   DREADNOUGHT, 
or    example,    the    first    Dreadnought 
•  built  was  constructed,  not  in  Eng- 
I,  a  dozen  years  ago,  but  in  the  Unit- 
States   in   1814.     True,     she     was   a 


wooden  Dreadnought,  but  she  was  an 
all-big-gun  vessel,  and  her  vital  parts 
were  surrounded  by  an  armor  of  oak  ex- 
actly comparable  to  the  armor  of  the 
battleship  of  to-day.  This  was  the  Dem- 
ologos,  or  Fulton,  built  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Robert  Fulton  himself,  and  it  was 
the  first  war  steamship  ever  built.  Be- 
sides having  a  wheel  in  centre,  and  the 
radical  innovation  of  steam,  her  batteries 
of  twenty  long  32-pounders  were  rein- 
forced by  a  submarine  gun  carrying  a 
100-pound  shot.  She  measured  145  feet 
over  all,  and  was  built  with  two  hulls 
separated  from  end  to  end  by  a  channel 
15  feet  wide  and  66  feet  long,  in  which 
the  waterwheel  revolved  absolutely  pro- 
tected from  the  enemy's  shot.  The  main, 
or  gun,  deck,  was  protected  by  a  parapet 
4  feet  10  inches  thick  of  solid  timber, 
and  on  the  upper  deck  many  hundreds 
of  men  could  have  paraded.  She  had 
two  stout  masts  and  four  rudders,  so 
that  she  might  go  either  way  without 
turning.  In  addition,  she  had  a  furnace 
for  hot  shot,  and  could  discharge  an  im- 
mense column  of  boiling  water  into 
an  enemy's  port-hole.  She  could  have 
steamed  through  the  British  fleet  from 
end  to  end  unscathed,  but,  the  war  com- 
ing to  an  end,  she  was  tied  up  in  the 
Brooklyn  navy  yard,  and  there  she  lay 
for  fifteen  years,  until  she  blew  up.  The 
navy  made  no  attempt  to  improve  upon 
her  or  to  make  use  of  Fulton's  ideas, 
or  to  lead  the  world  in  producing  war 
steamships.  It  was  actually  not  until  1841 
that  two  twin  side-wheelers,  the  Mis- 
sissippi and  the  Missouri,  were  finally 
built  by  the  navy  as  its  first  steam  cruis- 
ers, by  which  time  war  steamships  were 
almost  a  commonplace  abroad.  Even  as 
late  as  1835,  the  famous  Commodore 
Matthew  Calbraith  Perry  nearly  threw 
away  his  reputation  when  he  asserted 
that  a  war  steamship  of  1,300  tons  would 
be  built  to  cruise  the  sea  for  twenty 
days  at  a  time  without  accident. 

The  history  of  the  Monitor  affords  still 
another  bit  of  evidence.  What  difficulties 
Ericsson  had  in  overcoming  the  conser- 
vatism of  the  Navy  Department  has  been 
well  pointed  out  in  the  admirable  life 
of  the  inventor  written  by  Col.  William 
C.  Church,  the  veteran  editor  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  Journal.  Yet  the  Mon- 
itor, hastily  built  as  it  was,  played  a 
great  r&le  in  revolutionizing  warfare.  The 
cause  of  its  failure  to  become  a  dom- 
inating naval  type  was  the  lack  of  a 
proper  ventilation  system,  the  lack  of  any 
decks  on  which  to  parade  the  crew  when 
at  sea,  and  because  the  navy  could  not 
get  used  to  the  fact  that  water 
rolled  over  the  deck  while  the  Monitor 
was  at  sea.  As  soon  as  the  war  was 
over,  the  newest  and  best  of  the  ships, 
the  Dunderberg,  etc.,  were  sold  to  for- 
eign governments.  True,  the  Miantono- 
moh  and  the  Monadnock  cruised  success- 
fully, the  one  to  Europe  and  the  other 
around  Cape  Horn,  but  the  navy  stuck 
to  the  high-sided  wooden  ships  until  the 
new  navy  came,  when  it  squarely  turned 
its  back  upon  this  American  invention 
and  followed  the  British  precedent  in 
building  the  high-sided  predecessors  of 
the  present  battleships.  These  took,  it  is 
true,  the  principle  of  Ericsson's  turret 
and  armor,  but  abandoned  some  of  the  vital 
features  which  distinguished  the  Monitor. 
Curiously  enough,  to-day,  in  November, 
1815,  we  have  the  British  Prime  Minis- 


ter Asqulth,  lauding  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  service  of  the  British 
Monitors  as  having  been  the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  any  vessels  since  the  war 
began,  and  praising  Lord  Fisher  for  his 
development  and  use  of  these  boats  which 
more  nearly  approach,  If  the  fragmen- 
tary descriptions  which  arrive  here  are 
correct,  the  Ericsson  Monitors  than  any- 
thing built  since,  with  the  exception  of 
the  two  or  three  that  the  American  Navy 
has  constructed  in  modern  times,  only 
to  abandon. 

SO    WITH     TORPEDO    BOATS     AND     SUBMA- 
RINES. 

The  history  of  the  torpedo  boat  Is  the 
third  illustration  of  the  Inability  of  our 
naval  officers  to  become  enthusiastic 
about  new  types  of  craft.  The  Confederates 
in  the  Hunley  and  David  produced  boats 
that  brought  us  right  up  to  the  era  of 
modern  submarines.  Cushing's  torpedo- 
ing of  the  Albermarle,  and  the  Confed- 
erate use  of  the  torpedo  and  the  near-sub- 
marine, were,  despite  the  lapse  of  years, 
the  step  just  preceding  modern  mine  and 
torpedo  developments.  But  the  navy 
pressed  not  at  all  for  the  development  o' 
the  torpedo  boat  until  about  1890.  It  had 
In  the  seventies  a  torpedo  ram,  the 
Alarm,  which  like  the  Demologos  was  al- 
lowed to  rust  out  In  a  navy  yard.  Its 
officers  concerned  themselves  not  at  all 
with  the  study  of  the  development  of  the 
floating  mine,  and  for  this  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility cannot  be  put  upon  the 
civilian  Secretaries,  for  there  were  navy 
officers  at  the  head  of  every  bureau  of 
the  Department  during  these  years.  They 
could  easily  have  slipped  Into  the  ap- 
propriation bills  a  few  thousands  for  ex- 
perimental torpedo  boats,  but  they  did 
not  even  protest  very  vigorously  against 
the  building  In  the  late  seventies  of  the 
Trenton  and  the  Adams  and  other  com- 
fortable wooden  ships  of  the  old  type  th»t 
had  been  the  rage  before  the  outbreak 
of  the  Civil  War,  although  in  the  sev- 
enties all  of  the  rest  of  the  world  was 
going  In  for  other  kinds  of  vessels,  and 
the  modern  mobile  torpedo  and  torpedo 
boat  were  being  developed  soon  after. 

Even  after  the  beginning  of  our  mod- 
ern navy,  our  officers  were  but  little  In- 
terested, Rear-Admiral  C.  McR.  Wins- 
low  being  one  of  the  few  to  take  a  deep  in- 
terest in  this  new  type  of  torpedo  vessel 
at  the  outset 

And  so  the  story  has  been  with 
the  submarine,  too.  The  first  group 
of  under-water  boats  was  tied  up  In  the 
navy  yards!  Only  gradually  was  practice 
with  them  begun.  Not  until  Secretai" 
Daniels  appointed  Capt.  A.  W.  Grant,  of 
the  navy,  last  May,  to  take  charge  of 
the  submarine,  was  a  separate  or- 
ganization for  them  deemed  worth  while. 
Indeed,  the  makers  of  these  boats  charee 
emphatically  that  a  great  deal  of  tn» 
trouble  which  has  happened  on  these 
most  delicate  craft  has  been  due  to  the 
fact  that  very  young  and  inexperienced 
officers — ensigns,  the  ink  on  whose  com- 
missions was  hardly  dry — have  been 
given  charge,  while  officers  of  great  skill 
and  experience  were  demanded.  All  this 
is  being  remedied  under  Secretary  Dan- 
iels's guidance,  but  the  fact  remains  that 
the  submarine  was  a  step-child  of  the 
navy  from  the  time  that  It  appeared  until 
the  war  abroad  showed  what  others  could 
do  with  it,  and  yet  it  was  an  American 


18 


THE   QUESTION  OF   PREPAREDNESS 


Invention  and  the  outgrowth  of  Con- 
federate Ingenuity  and  skill,  as  It  had 
been,  further  back,  the  invention  of  Bush- 
nell  and  Fulton.  Indeed,  the  submarine 
has  been  but  like  numerous  other  Ameri- 
can inventions  which  have  had  to  find 
a  market  abroad  because  the  designers 
could  not  interest  the  home  authorities. 

Surely,  therefore,  Secretary  Daniels 
has  done  a  great  service  in  appointing  a 
civilian  board  to  cooperate  with  the  navy, 
thereby  not  only  bringing  into  touch  with 
the  service  great  talents,  but  creating  a 
machinery  that  will  examine  and  test  all 
inventions  offered  and  invite  others, 
without  professional  prejudice,  and  put 
squarely  alongside  of  the  best  navy  tal- 
ent a  fresh  civilian  point  of  view  untram- 
melled by  red  tape,  precedent,  routine,  or 
traditions  or  customs.  These  are  all  prac- 
tical reasons  for  the  civilian  control  of 
the  navy. 

LBSSON8    OF    THE    PRESENT    WAR. 

Perhaps  this  new  arrangement  may 
lead  to  a  reconsideration  of  our  entire 
naval  policy  In  the  light  of  the  European 
war.  At  present  Secretary  Daniels  Is 
asking  for  a  little  bit  more  of  everything 
old  and  something  new  In  the  battleship 
cruiser,  which  In  the  opinion  of  many 
people  has  not  yet  demonstrated  its 
worth.      Nor    has    anybody    yet    really 


gauged  the  extent  of  the  success  of  the 
German  submarines,  which  at  this  writ- 
ing are  sinking  merchantmen  In  the  very 
narrows  of  Gibraltar  right  under  the  eyes 
of  the  fortress  and  in  a  passage-way  so 
narrow  that  it  would  seem  as  If  they 
could  be  guarded  against  there  better 
than  anywhere  else,  and  the  mystery  of 
how  they  can  operate  hundreds  or  thou- 
sands of  miles  from  a  known  base  re- 
mains unexplained.  We  have  not -stopped 
to  decide  whether  the  battleship  is  on 
top   or  the   submarine. 

Least  of  all,  as  was  pointed  out  in  the 
first  article  of  this  series,  have  we  real- 
ly decided  whether  ours  is  to  be  an  of- 
fensive or  a  defensive  navy. 

But  after  all,  the  prime  reason  for  the 
civilian  domination  of  the  policy  and 
management  of  the  navy  is  that  this 
Government  is  not  warlike,  that  it  places 
the  arts  and  ideals  of  peace  above  those 
of  war,  and  even  above  preparation  for 
war.  Those  is  control,  therefore,  must  be 
men  who  are  detached  from  any  one  in- 
terest, military  or  civilian,  so  that  they 
may  survey  the  whole  field  of  the  na- 
tion's development  and  ambitions,  and 
proportionately  divide  the  finances  of  the 
country  between  the  various  contending 
branches  of  Government.  Moreover,  the 
people  in  control  must  be  those  who  are 


also  charged  with  the  responsibility  for 
raising  the  funds.    This  suggests  one  of 
the  dangers  and  weaknesses  of  the  mil- 
itary programme  in  any  country,  for  the 
officers  of  the  General   Staff  can   never 
be   got   to    take   any   cognizance   of   the 
financial  resources  and  needs  of  the  Gov- 
ernment; they  not  only  demand  the  Uon'a 
share  of  the  taxes  wrung  from  a  pt 
but  they  are  absolutely  Indifferent  to  the 
starving  of  any  other  branch  of  govern- 
mental enterprises.  We  shall  hear  much, 
If  the  Wilson  programme  of  prepared  >i<-  ,s 
goes   through,   about  the   next  step,   the 
formation  of  a  committee  of  national  de- 
fence to  coordinate  the  functions  o 
army  and  the  navy,  and  of  all  the  cl' 
enterprises   which   it   Is   now   recog 
must  also  be  mobilized  when  war  comes. 
If  that  committee  is  not  supervised 
controlled  vigorously  by  Congress  it  will 
become  a  veritable  Frankenstein  monster, 
using  all  its  influences  to  have  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United   States  not  only 
pour   forth   the   bulk   of   its  income    ' 
preparedness   (the    Japanese     now 
one-third  of  their  Income  in  direct 
indirect  taxation),  but  to  make  pre; 
tion  for  war  the  chief  business  of  this 
nation,   as  it  has  long  been   of  France, 
Germany,  Austria,  and  other  countri 


THE  REAL  REFORM  AND  THE  REAL  PROBLEM 

Never  Was  There  Less  Need  for  Haste  in  Military  Measures— The  Question 
One  of  Morale  Rather  than  Enlargement — Present  System  Can- 
not Reform  Itself — Warnings  from  Europe's  Situation 


IF  THE  ARGUMENTS  and  facts  ad- 
vanced in  this  series  of  articles 
are  of  any  value,  it  must  be 
plain  that  any  haste  In  building  up 
either  army  or  navy  will  not  result  in 
real  preparedness.  To  add  to  the  navy 
before  the  lessons  of  the  war  are  gleaned, 
may  easily  mean  to  squander  millions  In 
an  inexcusably  fatuous  fashion.  This  is 
so  self-evident  that,  across  the  water,  the 
British  astonishment  at  Mr.  Wilson's 
programme  has  been  thus  voiced  by  the 
London  Telegraph: 

"We  have  the  spectacle  of  the  great- 
est democracy  in  the  world,  although 
separated  from  Europe  by  more  than 
3,000  miles,  in  such  a  hurry  for  more 
men  of  war  that  it  has  decided  not 
even  to  wait  for  the  lessons  on  construc- 
tion and  armament  which  the  war  may 
teach.  Moreover,  this  decision  has  been 
reached  by  a  party  which  came  into 
power  in  opposition  to  the  Rooseveltian 
policy  of  the  'big  stick'  and  pledged 
itself  to  economy  in  armaments." 

Similarly  to  build  upon  the  present 
unsatisfactory  and  criminally  wasteful 
military  system  will  not  result  either  In 
greater  efficiency  or  better  preparedness, 
with  the  exception  of  the  matter  of  ad- 
ditional matiriel — new  fortifications  and 
reserves  of  ammunition.  All  of  which 
makes  haste  in  arming  absolutely 
inadvisable.  Even  if  there  were  occasion 
for  hurrying,  an  overhauling  of  our 
present  army  would  seem  the  only  wise 
policy. 


NEVER  LESS  NEED  FOR  HASTE. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  never  could 
be  a  time  when  there  was  less  need 
of  haste  in  arming.  Every  month  that 
passes  with  the  war  in  full  blast  in- 
creases the  safety  of  the  United  States 
by  further  exhausting  the  combatants 
abroad.  The  President  and  Mr.  Garri- 
son themselves  admit  this,  not  only  be- 
cause they  adduce  no  positive  reasons 
which  would  warrant  our  preparing  as 
if  the  foe  were  at  the  door,  but  because 
Mr.  Wilson  wishes  to  spread  his  naval 
programme  over  a  period  of  five  years, 
and  Mr.  Garrison  desires  Congress  to 
take  two  years  for  the  increase  of  the 
regular  army.  Would  they  delay  thus 
if  they  felt  that  there  were  a  grave 
crisis  at  hand?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr. 
Wilson,  barring  political  reasons,  could 
perfectly  well  have  repeated  at  the  Man- 
hattan Club  the  appeal  of  his  message 
of  a  year  ago — that  the  country  keep 
calm  and  beware  of  changing  the  Unit- 
ed  States   into   an   armed  camp. 

That  men  as  sensible  as  President  Wil- 
son and  Mr.  Garrison  have  yielded  to 
the  latest  argument  of  the  militarists  that 
at  the  close  of  the  war  we  shall  become 
the  objective  of  robber-raids  by  Germany 
and  Great  Britain,  because  we  shall  be 
the  only  really  prosperous  nation,  with 
large  supplies  of  cash,  is  not  to  be  be- 
lieved. Munchausen  never  invented  a 
more  absurd  fairy-tale.  But  if  they  did 
believe  it,  and  were  to  convince  Con- 
gress   that    something    must    be    done, 


there  is  surely  still  time  for  a  cons 
tive  procedure  like  the   following.     Fir* 
a  decision  as  to  what  the  policy  of  the 
United  States  shall  be,  whether  defer  : 
or  offensive,  and  whether  the  count, 
to  defend  itself  by  Its  navy  or  prim;-, 
by  its  coast  defences  and  mobile  sole 
How  important  this  is  appears  from  v. 
ter  I  have  just  received  from  a  high     < 
thority  in  the  War     Department,     who 
states   that   every  consideration   of  pos- 
sible invasion  presupposes  the  total  ion: 
of  the  command  of  the  seas.    That  is,    ' 
take  It,  that  every  American  subm: 
must  disappear  beneath  the  waves  before 
our  secondary  defence  on  land  will  ever 
come  Into   play,   for  it   is  imposslbl     to 
conceive   of    an   armada    of    a   thou.-:   m 
ships  crossing  to  our  shores  while  there 
are  still  ten  American  submarines  a 
The    British    success    in    moving    tr 
across  the  Channel,  a  two  hours'  run 
fords  no  basis  for  comparison. 

Secondly,   Congress   should  inform  the 
country  specifically  aaainst  what  pos-.'   i 
foes  we  are  arming:     There     can     only, 
be  three — Germany,  Japan,  and  Engl..'  i. 
With  France,  Russia,  or  Italy  the  pros- 
pect  of  any  hostilities  is   so   absolutely- 
remote  as  to  be  inconceivable ;  but  if 
did  come,  it  could  only  be  a  question  of 
naval  combats.     If  there  are  only  three 
probable  enemies,  the  problem  become;:  at 
once   greatly   simplified,    even    from    the 
point  of  view  of  the  wildest  military  m:  • 
and  we  shall  put  an  end  to  much  loi.-s» 
talk  about  a  possible  European  combi  .<  - 
tion  against  us  in  the  manner  of  the  i 


THE    QUESTION   OF    PREPAREDNESS 


19 


ber-ourons  of  the   Rhim    in   the   Middle 
Ages. 

A    QUESTION    OF    MOBALB. 

Thirdly,  Congress  should  itself  show  a 
realization  of  the  fact  that  military  values 
are  not  to  be  measured  in  terms  of  the 
size  of  fleets  nor  armies  by  their  num- 
bers.     Morale,    discipline,    efficiency    in 
shooting,   and  ability   in   high   command 
are    all    determining    factors.      Examples 
of  this  are  unending.     Of  what  value  to 
Russia  was   her   fleet  in   the   war   with 
Japan,    when    her    ships    flred    on    each 
other  at  the  Dogger  Bank,  and  were  so 
utterly  unfit  to  combat  the  Japanese  in 
the  deciding  naval  battle?    In  the  present 
war  the  Austrian  army,  for  all  its  large 
numbers,  was  defeated  by   Servians  and 
Russians   until   German     efficiency   took 
charge  and  competent  German  generals 
began  to  lead.    Russia  always  has  troops 
in  great  masses,  yet  in  her  whole  mod- 
ern history  has  never  won  in  a  conflict 
in  which  conditions  were  fairly  equal,  de- 
feating the  Turks  in  1877  only  because  of 
Rumanian   aid.      What     guarantee     can 
Congress   give   to   the   country    that   the 
new  Continental  army  Mr.  Garrison  asks 
will    have    any    effective    military    value 
whatever?     If  Congress  does  realize  that 
the  question  of  efficiency  is  far  more  vital 
than  that  of  mere  numbers,  It  should  be- 
gin its  work  by  investigating  the  army 
from   a   purely    military   standpoint,   un- 
muzzling every  officer  who  appears  before 
it,  and  giving  him  a  guarantee  that  no 
criticisms  of  the  service  as  it  exists  to- 
day   will    affect    his    future    career.      It 
would   be   impossible   to    exaggerate   the 
startling    character    of    the    information 
that  would  come  to  it,  from  the  younger 
officers  in   particular.     It  would   demon- 
strate  beyond  question   the   existence  of 
evils,    which,    however     consecrated     by 
years   of  growth  and   tolerance,   are  ab- 
solutely   inconsistent   with    any    efficient 
military    service   and   work   grave   hard- 
ships to  deserving  and  ambitious  officers. 

Such  an  inquiry  would,  of  course,  be 
compelled,  if  frank  and  honest,  to  place 
a  large  share  of  the  blame  upon  poli- 
ticians in  and  out  of  Congress.  It  would 
establish  that  there  are  economies  to  be 
effected,  beginning  with  the  present  an- 
nual waste  of  $5,500,000  upon  "politi- 
cal forts"  which  would  not  only  result  in 
increased  efficiency  but  make  possible  a 
considerable  enlargement  of  the  army 
without  additional  cost.  The  most  de- 
sirable outcome  might  even  be  the  teach- 
ing of  Congress  how  to  make  military 
appropriations  so  that  it  will  not  be  In- 
duced to  appropriate  $17,700  in  extra 
pay  for  officers  engaged  in  the  hazardous 
work  of  teaching  cadets  at  West  Point  or 
to  pay  $1,500  every  year  for  wooden 
floors  for  the  tents  of  these  cadets  when 
they  go  Into  "camp" — youngsters  who  are 
to  train  men  in  real  camps  in  the  field  liv- 
ing in  electrically  lighted  tents  with  per- 
manent Iron  frames  and  board  floors!  Such 
a  committee  of  Congress,  if  really  search- 
ing in  its  Inquiry,  would  be  particularly 
amazed  at  the  army  of  civilians  attached 
to  our  garrisons,  wh'le  If  they  should  put 
a  stop  to  the  free  use  of  soldiers  as  "strik- 
ers," as  gardeners,  as  drivers  of  lce-wa- 
K"ns,  as  servants  and  laborers  of  every 
ind  and  description,  they  would  make 
army  vastly  more  attractive  to 
worthy  Americans. 

Such  a  committee  would  speedily  learn, 


among  many  other  facts,  (1)  that  general 
army  appropriations  lead  to  abuses  and 
waste;  that  the  exercise  of  discretion  In 
expenditures    in    army    posts    and    else- 
where leads  to  the  precedence  of  the  com- 
fort  of   officers   and   their  families   over 
what  would  be  of  benefit  to  the  public 
service;    (2)  that  the  lack  of  any  actual 
supervision  of  the  disposition  of  moneys 
appropriated    or    results    obtained    leads 
directly  to  inefficiency;    (3)    that  reform 
from  within  is  almost  hopeless  as  long  as 
there  is  no  critical  supervision  from  the 
outside,    inspections    by    officers    having 
less  and  less  value;  that  there   should  be 
inspection  by  those  free  from  army  influ- 
ences, precisely  as  we  call  in  bank  exam- 
iners to  pass  upon  the  condition  of  our 
banks— without  any  one  feeling  that  that 
is  a  reflection  upon  ttie  uprigut  bankers; 
(4)   that  many  of  the  army's  faults  are 
due  to  the  carrying  over  into  the  mili- 
tary  service,   as  reorganized   in   1898,   of 
customs  like  the  building  of  homes  for 
officers'   families,  which  were  not  faults 
under  the  conditions  controlling  when  the 
army  was  on  the  frontier  and  engaged  in 
Indian  campaigns;    (5)   that  there  is  no 
better    evidence    of    the    necessity    of    a 
complete  overhauling  of  the  service  than 
the    so-called    "Manchu"    law    passed   by 
Congress  Itself  in  1912,  in  order  to  put  an 
end  to  favoritism  and  to   absence  on  easy 
detached  duty  of  many  officers  for  long 
periods  of  years.     This  law  requires  that 
after  four  vears  of  absence  from  his  or- 
ganization  an   officer   must  be   returned 
to     his     corps     or     else     his     pay     will 
be  taken  out  of  the  pay  of  the  officer  on 
whose  order  a  violation  took  place.    This 
law  is  a  military  monstrosity  In  that  it 
is   a  direct   Interference   of  the   Federal 
legislature  with  the  management  and  dis- 
position of  the  army's  personnel.    Tet  the 
army   welcomed  It  and  believes  that  It 
adds  not  only  to  the  officer's  chance  of 
getting  a  square  deal,  but  to  the  efficiency 
of  the  service  as  well.     None  the  less  it 
stands  as  a  grave  indictment  of  the  past 
yielding  of  the  War  Department  to  social 
and  political  pressure  and  of  the  military 
chiefs  who  permitted  these  grave  abuses 
to  go  on  and  took  part  in  them. 

Once  these  facts  were  ascertained,  Con- 
gress would  have  no  difficulty  in  building 
up  anew.  The  efficiency  of  the  Ord- 
nance Corps,  and  the  Engineers  along 
certain  lines,  the  growing  efficiency  and 
ability  of  the  Coast  Artillery — which  has 
made  wonderful  strides  since  the  writer 
of  this  was  drilled  by  officers  of  the  old 
foot  artillery  in  the  days  when  an  enlist- 
ed man  In  that  branch  might  serve  five 
years  and  never  see  a  shotted  gun  flred — 
point  the  way.  Congress  could  then  strive 
for  real  preparedness  by  seeing  to  it  that 
military  neglect,  indifference,  and  inef- 
ficiency are  punished,  and  merit,  zeal,  and 
industry  rewarded;  that  the  political  type 
of  general  forever  disappears,  and  really 
capable  generals  be  chosen  who  shall  be 
kept  so  busy  at  their  tasks  that  they 
shall  not  have  the  time  to  command  di- 
visions and  departments  and  also  make 
speeches  all  over  the  country  In  fav- 
or of  more  troops,  more  guns,  and 
more  reserves,  with  never  a  word 
as  to  the  abuses  that  honey-comb 
the  service.  If  Congress  makes  these 
changes  it  will  put  the  army  In  a 
position  where  it  can  reform  itself  and  It 
will  find  plenty  of  officers  to  respond  and 


to  take  the  lead  for  efficiency.  For,  as 
has  previously  been  pointed  out,  we  have 
many  capable  officers — as  we  have  many 
shirkers  and  blatant  self-advertisers — 
and  the  best  soldier-material  In  the  world 
since  It  is  the  most  upstanding,  self-re- 
liant, adaptable,  and  intelligent. 

MERE    MONEY    WIIX     NOT     DO     IT. 

Unless  this  reorganization  takes  place 
Congress  will  have  voted  more  men,  yet 
have  little  more  ut  any  army  and  perhaps 
less  efficiency,  than  at  present.  Certainly 
no  one  knows  whether  Mr.  Garrison's 
proposed  Continental  army  will  have  any 
military  value  whatsoever — which  would 
suggest  that  before  the  raising  of  400,000 
men  be  attempted  the  experiment  be  es- 
sayed with  say  40,000  to  see  if  it  is  prac- 
tical and  whether  Americans  can  be  had 
for  that  sort  of  service. 


But  when  all  the  details  are  discussed 
and  when  all  the  matters  of  military  pol- 
icy have  been  settled  one  way  or  the 
other,  the  great  question  still  remains: 
Should  the  United  States,  in  the  fevered 
disquiet  of  a  world-crisis,  alter  the  pol- 
icy of  its  national  life,  and  go  in  for 
large  armamentsT  It  cannot  be  success- 
fully averred  that  what  Mr.  Wilson  pro- 
poses is  merely  an  enlargement  of  the 
old  policy.  As  Mr.  Bryan  has  correctly 
pointed  out,  it  is  a  complete  hr«»'- 
certalnly  so  far  as  the  army  Is  concerned, 
ir.  that  thus  far  the  army  has  been  re- 
garded as  a  national  police  and  not  as 
a  body  to  prepare  for  invasion  or  war 
abroad.  For  more  than  a  century  the 
country  has  beer.,  unarms  ■".  I  hwver 

had  a  foreign  war  save  of  its  own  seek- 
ing. Even  In  the  days  when  It  was 
weakest,  no  one  assailed  it  Only  since  the 
days  when  we  began  to  have  a  large 
navy  have  the  rumors  of  war  and  the  talk 
and  gossip  of  war  been  abroad  In  the 
land  to  unsettle  the  public  and  to  form 
the  basis  of  militaristic  appeals  to 
Americans  slavishly  to  imitate  the  military 
follies  of  the  old  world,  to  join  the  Inter- 
national alliance  of  the  militarists  who 
everywhere  coin  money  out  of  the  fears 
of  the  professional  soldiers  and  keep  the 
masses  of  the  people  In  subjection  by 
means  of  their  armed  fellows  who  are 
primarily  instructed  that  they  must  kill 
their  own  relatives  if  the  sovereign  orders 
it. 

What  has  been  the  pride  of  America — 
that  we  were  free  from  a  large  profes- 
sional soldiery,  that  the  military  and 
naval  votes  of  our  Congress  could  not, 
until  recently  at  least,  be  used  as  the 
basis  for  increasing  the  burdens  of  mili- 
tarism abroad  and  clamping  still  heavier 
loads  upon  the  hard  working  peasantry, 
who,  in  the  end,  carry  the  soldiers  on 
their  backs — all  this  is  now  to  be  put 
aside  without  deliberation,  without  even 
the  assurance  that  if  the  sacrifice  is  made 
the  end  sought  will  be  achieved,  and  with- 
out, of  course,  waiting  to  put  the  issue 
squarely  before  the  whole  people  a  year 
hence.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  Presi- 
dent's words  had  but  a  half-hearted  ring, 
or  that  foreign  observers  consider  us  the 
most  volatile  of  people? 

LIGHT-HEARTED   DRAUGHT   OF   POISON. 

It  is,  of  course,  partly  due  to  the  su- 
preme self-confidence  we  have  In  our- 
selves, for  which  we  are  often  criticised. 


20 


THE    QUESTION    OF    PREPAREDNESS 


Those  who  with  clean  hands  urge  that  we 
take  far-reaching  steps  towards  naval- 
ism  and  militarism  believe,  light-heart- 
edly, that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
reasonable  preparedness  which  would  sat- 
isfy our  generals  and  admirals.  They, 
witnessing  Germany's  spiritual,  moral, 
and  now  economic  undoing  through  the 
poison  of  militarism,  believe  that  we,  too, 
can  us*  the  hypodermic  syringe  and  es- 
cape the  habit,  indulge  mildly  in  the  drug, 
and  profit  only  by  its  virtues,  avoiding 
all  Its  evil  effects.  That  no  one  else  has 
escaped  the  poison — not  even  democratic 
France — seems  to  count  not  at  all  in 
this  hour,  though  every  generation  of 
Americans  has  thought  differently  until 
this  day. 

We  are  sure  that  with  great  arma- 
ment works  springing  up  about  us  like 
mushrooms  over  night,   we   shall  escape 


the  armament  scandals  of  Europe,  those 
due  to  international  concerns  like  the 
Harvey  United  Steel  Company,  com- 
posed of  British,  German,  American, 
French,  and  Italian  companies,  all  of 
them  engaged  in  booming  the  market  for 
armor  plates  in  their  respective  countries 
on  the  plea  that  each  country  needed  to 
defend  itself  against  the  othefs;  or  the 
scandal  of  the  Krupps,  whose  cannon  and 
ammunition  are  now  being  used  against 
Germany  and  the  Germans  that  made 
them.  But  we,  being  satisfied  with  our 
experiences  with  the  patriotic  unselfish- 
ness of  our  trusts  and  our  protected 
manufacturers,  take  no  fear  from  the 
enormous  transformation  of  peaceful 
American  industries  Into  those  that  make 
the  supplies  of  war — we  are  beyond 
price  and  beyond  temptation!  We  listen 
gravely  to  the  assurances  that  we  must 


increase  our  "national  Insurance"  blU — 
now  seventy-four  cents  on  every  dollar — 
as  the  only  meat  I  o  national  safety,  and 
forget  that  never  have  such  large  sums 
been  spent  in  th'  vay  of  national  "In- 
surance" as  since  IS  00,  and  that  never  In 
any  similar  fifte'  .  years  In  the  world's 
history  have  the  been  so  many  or  so 
terrible  wars.  We  do  not  stop  to  ask 
whether  a  differc  kind  of  Insurance  is 
not  needed;  whether  anybody  else  could 
be  so  utterly  and  hopelessly  discredited  as 
the  militarists  who  raise  this  false  cry 
have  been  by  the  events  abroad. 

Surely  the  way  to  true  national  pre- 
paredness for  the  genuine  tasks  of  hu- 
manity, for  the  el  Uion  of  mankind,  for 
the  carrying  on  of  the  ideals  of  the 
great  and  unarmed  American  democracy 
of  which  we  are  so  proud,  lies  elsewhere, 
along  totally  different  lines  I 


W<=T><K><^>0(><r>0(<I>0(KC^(<3>fl(K==>0(K=r>^ 


he  Thoughtful 
Man's  Paper 


[  Throughout  its  hundred  and  fourteen  years 
^  of  existence  The  New  York  Evening  Post  has 
constantly  upheld  the  highest  ideals  of  American 
citizenship.         ::        ;:         ::         ::         -         »        » 

(|  Founded  under  the  protection  of  a  group  of  distinguished 
^  public  men,  of  whom  Alexander  Hamilton  was  one,  the 
paper  has  always  held  and  expressed  positive  opinions  on  all 
matters  pertaining  to  the  welfare  of  the  Nation.        :: 


f]J  The  New  York  Evening  Post  has  been 
J*  characterized  hastily  as  a  rich  man's 
paper.  It  is,  rather,  the  paper  of  the 
thoughtful  man  or  woman  and  good  citizen 
whatever  his  walk  in  life.  Its  practical 
usefulness  to  the  business  man  or  woman 


is  unequalled  by  any  other  American  news- 
paper. Its  unbiassed  reports  of  the»  com- 
mercial and  financial  news  of  the  world 
form  a  basis  for  correct  forecasting  of  fu- 
ture conditions  upon  which  the  success 
of  business  ventures  largely  depend 


The  New  York  Evening  Post 

More   than    a   Newspaper— A    National  Instill", 


y 


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